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Well either Michel let this sit around for a looong time, or this band's promo guys need to seriously get on the ball, as this is the first time I have gotten hold of a promo over two years after the album was officially released. I suppose we could chalk it up to this band's general cursed status, as they seem to have had quite a time getting this even recorded, much less released. So far this is the only full-length for Calvarium, which is a band made up of members of other bands, so this may be more a of a project.

The intent here was obviously to be as old-school as possible, and so this has a lot in common with the 'traditional' Norwegian Black Metal sound, with a certain gloss and dash of melody that I don't think a Finnish band can avoid. Maybe there's a band to prove me wrong, but while some quite good BM bands hail from Finland (Witness the mighty Argath!) they just can't do the 'raw' thing. So this is essentially Norwegian-style Black Metal with cleaner production and a bit of a melodic feel to the riffing. There's no damn keyboards on here, and no clean vocals – none of that crap. Just basic, blasting Black Metal with a lot of screaming about Satan and some rather cool intoned passages. Calvarium do slow down a little here and there, as on the relatively blast-free "Jumalviha", but largely this is full speed ahead.

Calvarium do what they want to do very well, and this album is enjoyable, but after a few songs, an essential sameness to the cuts begins to become apparent, and by the end the album seems less like 9 songs than the same three played repeatedly. This band plays perfectly good Black Metal, but that is unfortunately all they do, and they bring nothing new or distinctive to the genre at all. So "The Skull Of Golgotha" is fun, but too generic to be really memorable.