Famine of a Thousand Frozen Years

I have two complaints with this. So I will get them out of the way first.
1)For clarification (because as far as I know, it's never been done elsewhere) 'apostisy' is translated as 'removal from earth', which is not to be confused with 'apostasy' which is 'removal from God'. Being a Christian band, it seems a bit odd that they would pick that name.

2) Not a big fan of the topless girl representing Death on the cover. Decent picture, but again, appropriateness people!

Other than those two nit picky complaints, I have to say this cd has me completely floored. It is hard to put into words my own personal love for this release. But I will try.

On this release, even if your a complete God hating bigot, you can overlook their Christianness, because it takes a very keen eye on the lyrics to even get a hint of it. And even then it's not readily apparent.

Know how there are wonderful guitar grooves in a song you really like that is over entirely too quickly? This band doesn't have that problem. The main guitar section is predominant for a long time, typically not letting up for the duration of the song. Despite this, it never gets boring or repetitive. There are enough other guitar flavorings that keep it fresh.

The music itself is brooding and dark, though not overly flamboyant. The closest comparison I can come up with is 'Bolt Thrower'. The key focus is the main guitar riff driving the majority of the song. Even though there are portions that deviate from it, the timing and beat hardly ever change. The monotone exhaustive sounding vocals adds a great feel to the overall flow of the songs.

And yet, even with the Bolt Thrower comparison, there is a ever so slight flavoring with the keyboard at times. Sometimes, such as in the track 'And Thus It Was...' it comes only at the end to act as a closer to the song. In others, such as 'Snava Skogsstig', it opens the song, but its influence is minor.

If you like trudging guitars with excellent groove in a death metal setting, you cannot go wrong here.