Abyss, The - The Other Side
Review: A melodic black metal formed of liquid strumming melodies which intertwine to harmonize in suggestion of spaces beneath its surface, creating an ambience in which the violence of the music is forgotten in the breathtaking motion of its melody.
Twisting from a simple chromatic polarity of notes a melody will gain its energy as it disengages from a dominant direction to become dissonant and resolve in a prolonged statement of its harmony with the ambiguous and illdefined minor modes, suggesting as does the simple but direct format of the rest of this music a truth obscure but alive. These songs vary the "skins" of their themes as structured from rhythm and counterpoint with lucidity and verve.
1. Marutukku
2. Tjänare af besten 
3. Psycomantum
4. Massacra (Hellhammer cover)
5. Mörkrets vandring
6. Sorgens Dal
7. Slukad
8. Förintelsens tid äro kommen
If seen as culturally inspired, these songs almost represent opera for the technological information age, in which a vast story spills itself into chaos before the audience but is only resolved in suggestion and an angry, defiant, independent and anarchistic duality. In a style similar to Ancient or Emperor, this band drapes lengthy melodies over boxlike atmospheric percussion.
Weaving minor harmonies into each riff progression to build its tension for culmination, the Abyss are unafraid to throw their inertia into climactic melodies of counterthematic structure. Outlined in shrikes of mortal alienation on top of a blasting tirade of even percussion, this music mixes simple grindcore extremity into the sense of melody that gave black metal the voice of epic poetry.