We Are the North... Mean Cold War...

You know the feeling when you pick up a split album that contains bands you've never heard before? The album starts playing with the first band and after a couple of minutes you think "Wow, this sounds great. I wonder what kind of crap the second band might be..."

That statement proved wrong with this release. Both Old Wainds and Nav provide the listener with russian extreme cold, hateful and fast black metal. At one point I even started to believe that the two bands have the same lineup...

The split features a 7" (1999) of Old Wainds and an old demo of Nav.

The listener doesn't get a single moment of peace. Raw production, hateful (russian) vocals, buzzing fast guitars... It all just blasts in in an instant, and you don't want to skip any of the tracks. These bands have a very unique world of hateful sound and riffing, it amazes me that I've never heard a band sounding like this before. Both of the bands have a fast drummer, though Nav has a bit faster drumming overall.

+ Very unique riffing
+ Fast, chaotic and freezing atmosphere
+ Very hateful russian vocals
- Old Wainds' outro, very poorly executed piano/synth-piece...

Standout tracks :
Old Wainds - Dead Eyes Of The Dark
Nav - Warriors Of Glacial Desert

I can highly recommend this album to fans of terrible sound quality and somewhat of a unique sound in black metal.