This is quite the impressive recording. Evil as fuck, confusing, and downright impressive are the keywords here. Nastrond have changed a great deal since the demo, and are now employing darker sounding vocals, amazingly strange riffs, and much improved drumming. With the combination of an absurd synth production, the CD ends up being not only violent, but successfully sick sounding in an evil sort of way.

It's quite difficult to explain just how Nastrond create their music. It's all quite morbid sounding, very fast paced, and filled with creepy sounding synth sections. The guitar production is insane for the most part, mainly because it's sounds so thick, yet at the same time distant. Listen to track four, "Akhkhaur (The Grave Dweller)" for an example of this. Vocally, although being fairly generic, there is enough anger and sickness in the vocals for them to work nicely.

The band, besides using original guitar sections, impressive keyboards, and excellent vocals, also add a female spoken section in the last track; and rather than being "lovely" sounding, it ends up being terribly frightening. And it would be impossible to forget the interesting instrument used in the track "Jai Ma Kali", since it's a sitar!! (an Indian instrument.I've probably spelt that wrong). Well done to say the least.

An excellent album by all means. It's nice to see a Swedish band playing actual black metal, rather than boring Swedish style death metal, or mindless pop-music. I've heard the new album "Age of Fire" is even better, so I'll be checking this out as soon as I have some extra cash. It's been out for almost a year though, so obviously I'm quite a bit behind.

© 1997 brand