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I was really impressed with this band's last album, the excellent Due Diaboli et Apocalypse, so I was glad to get a hold of their latest full-length, Legends of Kazakhstan. Considering the band's home country and the mysterious and often frightening legends it houses, it's not too surprising they would go ahead and make a concept album based on them.

Anyway, this is very different from their last one, eschewing the symphonic elements of their sound for a more straightforward Black/Death approach in the vein of Dark Funeral and especially Watain. I don't know if this was due to the band losing a couple of members between albums, but while it makes for a somewhat more typical sound, it's still a diabolical and menacing piece that blasts out your speakers like the chilling winds of the ancient steppe. It even slows down for some surprisingly lovely and moving sections on the last two tracks, one of which is a cover of "Sleep My Justice" by (Editor's note: I don't do Cyrillic...) (pronounced Suitsid, or Suicide in English). Other than that, this is an album of snarling Black Metal madness that may be a little less distinct than their old stuff, but leaves them no weaker for it.