Metsän pimeydessä

Very arresting name - Astral Corpse, I like it! - and the band boasts the bloodcurdling inhuman vocals to match as well. The music isn't quite so distinctive - it's steeped in straight-ahead old school black metal with a raw sound and an aggressive take-no-prisoners style - but what the band lacks in the way of a distinctive sound that would differentiate them from hundreds of other Finnish raw BM bands, the fellas compensate with energy and fury, some very good swanky riffs and even a rocking style, and lots of crashing percussion. Plus that voice! - well, it won't win very many song competitions but it would certainly blow away competitors, judges and audiences with its coldly (if slightly) reverb-etched spider death-rattle tones.

From the get-go, starting with "Cease to Exist", the band bolts away with blistering raw BM and never looks back to see if anyone is able to keep up. Only when we reach the title track does the band promise to slow down a little with hard rollicking rhythms and pounding cymbals but the aggression remains. The vocals revel in their sheer ugliness (and singing in Finnish often means racing through some very long words) and the music, harsh and crunching as it is, definitely plays second fiddle here. After that the guys keep going for all they're worth as though the clock is already ticking down to the doomsday they're probably all looking forward to and they've only got just so much time to serenade its coming.

The mostly short songs can sound alike and most differences among them are in the details of their riffs, their speed and their rhythms. They're heavy on lyrics as well so some tracks don't offer much opportunity for jamming or instrumental passages that would showcase solo lead guitar or some other instrument. "Nocturnal Winds" has enough instrumental music that we get a good idea of how well the AC musicians click together and go for broke. "Winds of Death" has a much noisier raw churning guitar sound and the track sounds as if it had been recorded separately from the rest of the album. The song features some good crunchy riffing and the singing isn't quite so forward and confronting.

The debut recording is a whirlwind of crabby voice, speedy blast-beat drumming and scrabbly raw guitars going full tilt. The guys certainly prove over and over again their technical skills in playing together at near-impossibly high speeds. Perhaps if they slowed down a bit and concentrated as much on writing and playing melodies as well as bashing out the drums and shredding the guitars to fine ash, Astral Corpse's future may be looking more astral and (save for the vocals) less cadaverous.