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Old Wainds - Scalding Coldness 86%

I've been hearing a lot of things about this Russian band, most of it good. Until about a month ago, I had not been able to find any of their material, until I was finally able to get my hands on their 2005 opus, Scalding Coldness. I have no idea how it compares to their later material, but this is overall a good album.

"Frostbitten", a moniker too often used in the black metal world, is a good way to describe this album. The guitars sound like the howling of a winter storm, sometimes atonal, sometimes with a thin veil of evil permeating the sound. The cymbals are reminiscent of shattering icicles, and the vocals are as cold as possible, and remind me at times of Quorthon's of Bathory fame. Occasionally the vocalist chants out a passage, loading the music with even more atmosphere. The music overall sounds at the same time somewhat like norsecore, blasting away at a thousand miles per hour with indecipherable screaming from the vocalist, sometimes "catchy" such as the thrash passages of "Through the Icy Wilderness of the Forest", or the slow moments in "...in the Glance of the Dead". One cannot forget the solo at the beginning of "Wolves in White', which is reminiscent of the one in Slayer's Angel of Death. The album has one interlude, "In the Forgotten Darkened Spheres", which brings to my mind pictures of a snow-covered tundra, or the coldest region of Antarctica.

This is an album, and a band, that are underrated. Although not exactly creative or original, it has the fury and the atmosphere, not to mention the skill, needed to make a name for itself; all that hinders its success is the fact that it is located in post - soviet Russia.