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From the rather reliable Hammer Of Hate comes a new split between two Finnish deep-sea dwellers, Korgonthurus and Musta Kappeli, and it seems they have joined forces to create an album that exhibits an usual display of symmetry. Both bands serve up a seventeen-minute Black Metal epic, which means long, melancholic stretches of abject misery, showered with persecuting guitars, rampant skin-blasting, and despair-riddled howls that float like a spectral presence. Along with the length, these tracks also share another ingredient; they both start and finish with ambient sounds of nature, a loose prologue and epilogue that bookend the desolation within.

As each band plays majestic Black Metal (though they marry the lo-fi production of the second wave with the genre's current pomposity), some degree of hypnotism is to be expected, meaning you get sucked into these songs; they reach out with bony fingers and pull you in. Korgonthurus provide the first and most successful segment, one which hammers away like a barn door in a hurricane, while the guitars, elsewhere, coat everything in snow. Musta Kappeli go for something even bleaker, with vicious vocals that recall Darkthrone's Under A Funeral Moon. While it is limited on CD to 1000 copies (and 500 on vinyl), this split is still a worthy purchase, if just to hear two unknowns produce something akin to a bracing wind.