If you like black metal and you like it good, then you owe yourself a listen of Goatmoon's "Finnish Steel Storm". Goatmoon are a Finnish black metal band run by sole member and mastermind "Blackgoat Gravedesecrator": they started their career playing punk-influenced raw black metal (as seen in the amazing "Death Before Dishonour") with fantastic results, to gradually shift towards folk/black metal later in their career. "Finnish Steel Storm" is the album coinciding with this turning point, but what really makes it unique is the fact that it takes the best elements from both Goatmoon eras, and it masterfully fuses them in a 38-minutes long monumental opus of darkness and misanthropy.
The music contained in "Finnish Steel Storm" is still punk-influenced black metal at the core, but with the addition of folk instruments and melodies that were absent from the previous record; also, while the production sounds pleasantly raw, it's much cleaner than in the band's debut, thus allowing all the instruments to be audible and abandoning their previous extremely barbaric style. The songs are generally quite short, with only the title track and the closing piece surpassing the 5-minutes mark; the riffs and the drumming retain a strong and characteristic punk influence, an heritage of the band's roots; the real innovation here, as I mentioned before, are the inclusions of folk instruments and melodies, fully displayed in tracks such as "Eclipsed By Raven Wings", "Alone" and "Finnish Steel Storm", that are also the strongest songs of the album. The structures of the songs are quite simple but extremely well-conceived, displaying Blackgoat's excellent songwriting skills when it comes to provide memorable riffs and evocative melodies.
On top of this, we have Blackgoat's rabid and torturous vocals, that sound extremely passionate and perfectly fit the compositions, complemented by the awesome production, which gives a pleasant underground feel to the record. The whole album permeates a dark and icy atmosphere, exalted by the intelligent use of the keyboards, which is exactly what you would expect from an excellent Finnish black metal record; another remarkable feature is the variety of the platter, with epic songs like the opener or the title track, melancholic pieces such as "Bitter Winter of Depression", "Alone" and the final song, or the take-no-prisoners approach of "Murder, Murder Glorious": while each track retains unique features that distinguish it from the rest, the whole platter sounds cohesive and well-studied from start to finish, which is something true only for the very best metal albums.
"Finnish Steel Storm" is Goatmoon's best output, combining elements of the debut with the folk influences the band would later include in its music. It's varied yet cohesive, memorable, atmospheric, dark, aggressive, one of those albums you could listen to again and again, without ever getting tired of it. Absolutely essential for any fan of black metal.
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=75U867A3G7U
