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There's really no shortage of traditional, cold and conservative Black Metal in the world, but Furia from Poland believe they have something new to add, and I won't deny the feeling in their melancholic brand of second wave. According to the band, this release admires "nothingness itself" – serving as a forceful monument to desolation. The seven tracks range in content from soft, clean acoustic sections (married to a despondent spirit always) to the kind of metallic fury notable among their Polish brethren. Furia exhibit more melodic and expressive tendencies than Darkthrone or Mayhem, but their music is rooted firmly in the conventions of the genre, tremolo riff-based and no stranger to the blast beat (but not afraid of a slower rhythm either), courted on occasion by the evocative beauty of a well-placed guitar lead, and of course the aforementioned acoustic breaks. The combination of raw emotion and recognizable beauty/melody brings to mind the French acts like Celestia and Mortifera; there is passion, but it's only interested in being dispassionate, in the bleakness of the world and that elegant artfulness present solely in the absence of light. Alternating between calm grace and a storm's wrath, Grudzien Za Grudniem is balanced and possesses a duality of nature that benefits both halves.

A strong guitar tone – and overall production, contained within the extremes of too primitive and too polished – supplements the tortured rasps of "Nihil," who sounds like a beast of antiquity let loose on the modern world, venomously decrying its failings of culture. Or that's what I imagine he's doing, since Polish is wholly alien to me. His strenuous yell often grows into an inhuman shriek, an interesting technique that lends much-needed individuality to a band playing Black Metal in 2009 that takes its cues from the frozen past. Not to suggest Furia sound derivative; they don't. Even if the occasional bit of flora seems familiar, much of the scenery is new. Only Norway is colder.