The Eyes of the Beast

This is a pretty cool album overall, mostly because of the interesting riff work, and the singers voice. The guitar sound is unique enough and overall fits the whole theme of this release. The package (layout, art work, etc.) is another high light (like all the bands releases) that capture a certain mood, or feeling through the imagery, which is quite fitting for the music on here.

The vocals, ranging from death metal like prolonged grunts to a more predominant black metal vocal assaulght, (more voice than ever present screaming if that makes sense) are done very well, also adding alot the the good qualities that this album has. Lyrically the topics pretty much stick to the woodsy, paganistic, nature fueled prose about the past, and certain dark images they choose to elaborate on, but really are some what standard for the music.

The guitars have a great production for being underground Black Metal, and offer up interesting veiws into what these musicians are fully capable of. There is alot palm muted, early paced death thrash, riffs mixed in with your more than average straight forward traditional black metal style chord progressions. Lots of cool arpeggiated rythms, and just very powerfull melodies overall make the guitar work on here a bit better then average.

There are many interesting aspects to this album in general, for instance on the fourth track (The Solstice), near the end, they do some cool background tracks over the song with an acoustic guitar, and roaring wind sounds that really enhances the ambience of this song imparticular. Some cool battle clips are on here also that are short enough to not bore you since so many genre remniscent bands have done so.

The druming is quite the aggravaited battery blasting and will keep you feeling the rythm through out your listen, with a very old school, well recorded, and upfront sound. This isnt overtly a polished album, but comes out with a nice even leveled sound, and an actually damn fine sounding production job considering the style the bands plays. You can hear the old school influences which range from black, death, and thrash metal to some very cool mixing of each. A more than decent album, not the most original in any way, but still entertaining, and the replay value is there. Two devil horns up.