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Lie in Ruins are a Finnish Death Metal band that have something of a reputation for being really excessive. Their debut was nearly an hour long, their follow-up Towards Divine Death was over seventy minutes, and afterwards they released this EP, whose nearly thirty-minute length would be a lot less excessive if it wasn't all dedicated to a single freaking song. That all might make it sound like I dislike this, but while it's not without issues, it's pretty cool all things considered.

It's pretty clear that Lie in Ruins are really into old-school Death Metal, as this sounds like a mishmash of past luminaries like Grave, Asphyx, and even Bolt Thrower in places. You get chunky riffing, bellowed vocals, and everything from mid-paced blasting to slow, almost Doomy crawls, and for what it's worth they're pretty good at doing all those things. The issue, of course, is that while there are some really cool parts to this song, there is absolutely no reason for it to be as long as it is, and I could see it being cut in half and being stronger for it. A big part of this is the more atmospheric sections, which don't add that much to the song and really clog up its ending, but even if you took those out it'd still be about 10 minutes too long. Despite all that, I must admit there is a charm to this amount of excess, as for this kind of thing can't really come from anywhere but a place of genuine love for the genre. The band could seriously do with tightening their songwriting and learning how to rein themselves in, but as is they're just a little too earnest and musically competent for me to criticize all that harshly.