For the fans who still mourn over the loss of their own musical preachers of the apocalypse, 16 Horsepower, there are good tidings, titled Dirty Blue. Track number eight of Mosaic, the new album of David Eugene Edwards' former sideproject and current day job Woven Hand, can measure up to the best songs he has written. It has the possessed threat of the holy fire that can also burn you. Drums and guitar propel it for over four minutes. There's a violin that tinges it as medieval as timeless. And the first words, This fear is only the beginning, set the tone for a lyric about our own little corner of Sodom and falling in a bottomless pit while the church bells of Leuven ring. Beautiful, very beautiful.

But the bad news that it is the towering peak of an otherwise somewhat flat album.

Mosaic does have its moments during the other 11 tracks, there's no denying. Whistling Girl, with its banjo-doom, is all there. Just like the intense spooky worship of Winter Shaker and the odd marriage between Joy Division and Dead Can Dance called Slota Prow. But they are contrasted with a fair number of completely superfluous instrumentals and sleepy interludes.

Edwards' fire is still burning, and in a dark way that is promising. Next time it will hopefully burn less often like a pilot-light.

3 stars (out of 5)