Yeah, they blatantly used the "return to the roots" orgasmic sales boost slogan with EVERY album that came after HCDR, still they've made more or less the same album now 5 times in a row. Halo of Blood was a return to the roots in terms of cover artwork and some fresh sounds, I guess that implied to how you can frigging SEE the slush all over Waste of Skin, the tremolo in Halo of Blood, the melodies in Scream for Silence, the chorus in Transference, the snow rain in Your Days Are Numbered and the chorus in All Twisted... see, basically all the atmospheric and good shit, but come on... you can't compare All Twisted to Follow the Reaper. There's good moments, but you have to pick them like strawberries over a cake.
It would just be sick to have something electrical and pumping (think of Follow the Reaper intro, Chokehold live version) and Satanic, it can be doom metal influences, black metal, cyber goth, I don't care... There has to be moods (like the devil woke up on the wrong side of the bed) and musical stuff so engaging it's like the rats invented an alien plasma cannon in their severs and are about to come up from the shadows and take over the world. This shit's supposed to be very underground and musically groundbreaking, leaving nothing but ashes remaining of the competing musicians. Alexi should take another approach to his songwriting, don't start by recording random guitar playing and gluing shit together, start by listening to your deep frequency of creativity, all those wildly creative, atmospheric goth-Indian-voodoo-death songs just waiting for someone to invent them. Instead of blindwalking on a path littered with diamonds, look underneath the leaves, to dark burrows still undiscovered. I'd go as far as to say put synthesizers and drums higher in importance, then worry about guitars.