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This has got to be one of the most interesting Black Metal albums I've heard so far. Ukrainians Nokturnal Mortum rely quite heavily on keyboards on this release, but manage to do so without making this sound like a keyboard-centric album. What makes this album most interesting however is the inclusion of folklorish sounds, which really sets them apart from anything else out there (at least anything else I've heard.) At times those Folk parts are almost hilarious, hell, the first time you have to at least smile at that after the shock of hearing that stuff! Sure thing is, this is original.

For the most part, the overall playing is fast and heavy, with occasional slowdowns. Some folklorish intros in some songs ease you up into what becomes a pretty fast song - I like the effect it produces. The guitar work is not the best out there, but it fits well in the overall sound, so it's hard to really view that as a negative thing. Lyrically... well, I don't know, there are no lyrics in the booklet and I can't decipher anything in the vocals - I've read that at least part, if not all of the album is sung in Russian. Actually it's supposed to be the whole album, but since some song names are in English... Go figure.

Ok... This album has 88 tracks for obvious NS reason (still dumb but anyways...) There are 10 tracks that are actually songs. Tracks 10 to 87 are just fillers with birds chanting... That's soooo cute. Those tracks are all 4 seconds in length. At least they were smart enough to not just put silent tracks like some bands do (that always annoys the hell out of me.)

While I don't share Nokturnal Mortum's NS ideologies (and, considering where they are from, I wonder why they adhere to NS ideologies - seems like it's becoming a trend in Eastern Europe anyway), their music is original and anything but boring. Musically highly recommended. Your call.