To this day, I am utterly baffled as to how The Haxan Cloak managed to become relatively popular at all–it all seems suspiciously Faustian.  Granted, Brian Krlic's profile has certainly benefited from his getting lumped in with the Raime/Demdike Stare pantheon of glacial, black-hearted "dance" artists, but his debut album was still essentially a collection of bleakly dissonant string dirges inspired by death, something that does not generally offer much in the way of mass appeal (or individual appeal for me, for that matter).  Excavation, however, is intermittently amazing, as Krlic's incredible evolution and inspired addition of deep sub-bass have transformed his previously oppressively sad vision into quite a heavy and frightening one.