Tonally and thematically, Norwegian singer/songwriter Hilde Marie Kjersem, with assistance from Jorgen Munkeby from Shining, achieves what might be called a fairly beefy sound - all trebly tones, pangs of delicately fretted harmonics and dirty overdriven riffs that bind it all together. Nothing here stays balanced in an aesthetic semblance of any sort. Instead, there is something self-consciously theatrical to it all. Each work emphasizes a dramatic personality, a showcase for sheer, sustained excess. For such flamboyancy, its remarkably sleek, with layers of tremolo guitar blurring into a dense, malevolent fuzz, while a melodic strain runs beneath its near abstract sensibility.

Sudden incongruous shifts generally grab the attention - abruptly tipping into acid-folk whimsy, with tabla, shakers and whistles or lurching into heavier passages of vibrato guitar scree powered by kinetic rhythms or performing cosmetic surgery on their harmonic flair to bolster its effect. Certain pieces fit as wayward contributions to an eccentric whole, yet others, fiercely self-possessed as they are, prove nonetheless substantial on their own. More than this, though, a good number of tracks amount to little more than meager sonic tricks. Taken as a whole, then, A Killer For That Ache flirts between moods and themes with a restless but ultimately unfocussed energy.