Wow....this is quite the emotionally painful sounding disc. There's nothing "fun" or exciting about this music...it's just a straight forward, and VERY painfully depressive doom/death CD. Filled with thick guitars, brutally sad sounding vocals, and some simple yet excellent (almost-Funeral-esque) keyboards, this is one of the finest doom albums I've heard in quite a while. The album starts out with the magnificent "Sign of a Storm", one of the more sad sounding metal songs I have EVER heard (since Theatre of Tragedy's "...a Distance There is"). It's almost epic in a way....it produces such an empty and cold sound that it literally tears the listener to pieces (emotionally, not physically of course). The rest of the songs continue in this fashion; slow, sludgy, and beyond melancholic. This is NOT an album to listen to when your feeling hyper or have just woken up. It requires a mass amount of attention to handle, and if listened to properly, will successfully make the entire world seem VERY negative. Although some people will say hate-filled death or black metal are the premier forms of music to listen to when your cranky, I'd personally recommend this, second only to some of the more outstanding female fronted doom bands out there. Red Stream, just like Avantgarde are quickly becoming a very respected label in my mind, since they aren't one to simply release garbage in the name of trends/cash. I look beyond forward to the next release from these Finnish bastards :)

© 1997 brand