Wilytank Here we have Circle of Ouroborus' 'Shores' album. It's so rare and unheard of that is has to be great right? Right?! Wrong! This is a really bad black metal album.

I've heard in some places that this album has some post-punk influences added to the standard depressive black metal that they play. Except for the cover song, I really don't see it. I've listened to tall the songs here, and the main though I had on my mind concerning the music was "Didn't I already hear Mütiilation do this years ago with 'Vampires of Black Imperial Blood' or 'Remains of a Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul'?" That's all the music really is: raw black metal with piss-poor production and a difficult to determine note scale. There's nothing really special going for it. Of course, this time around, instead of two French dudes, it's two Finnish dudes. Listen to "Nothingness" for a second and try to tell me that it didn't come from Mütiilation.

The vocals are a big difference from Mütiilation though, but it's one of the bigger reasons why this album is terrible. People for some reason like the apathetic vocal tone on this album; but it seriously sounds like the mix of a goat attempting to mimic human dialogue, and the ramblings of a very old Finnish lady from a small house out on the Finnish countryside. The vocals are what really slammed this album down the hardest. Hearing the singer recite certain lines, especially the refrains of the first two songs, made me want to hit myself in the head with a baseball bat seven or eight times. They were really unpleasant to listen to throughout, and I feel like this review's score would be much higher if the album was actually instrumental.

"Invocation" is probably the best song of the batch here just with the hints of harsh vocals and half-decent guitar lead, but it's not at all capable of damming up the flood of suck coming from this album.

If you're depressed, listen to depressive black metal sounds like a bad idea; because if it's shitty, like this album, it might actually make your condition worse. If you're not depressed, be wary of depressive black metal; because it it's shitty, like this album, you might start really hating life. Stay away from these shores.

Vehemency On Avain ja Veitsi (Finnish for ”Key and Knife”), Circle of Ouroborus’ approach is almost rocking. This tape provides three tracks of dreamy and hardly metalish music, something utterly odd - but in all its psychedelic weirdness, something really beautiful.

Unlike the previously reviewed Maailma Uppoaaaa, Avain ja Veitsi is more straightforward with choruses and simple structures. Klemi sings in Finnish which helps to make it sound more emotional and personal, the only negative side being that foreign people are missing a lot when they can’t dwell in the very symbolic and occult lyrics that Circle of Ouroborus once again provides. While there seems to always be a droning guitar or synth buzz in the background, lead melodies are apparent on the surface (most perfectly done in ”Punaisen Viivan Päässä”), topped by clean singing which is quite high in the mix and the usual low fidelity drums.

Throughout its 16-minute running time, Avain ja Veitsi is a pleasant experience in which interesting and weird melodies are present in every corner. Lately, Kuunpalvelus re-released this rather rare tape on CD so it’s again more widely available - and I might get the CD version just to ensure that if I wear out my tape due to extensive playing, I have an official back-up version of it.

Vehemency Oh, how glad I am that I managed to pick this up when it was released as it seemed to sell out in a matter of days and still never appearing in any download blogs. Maailma Uppoaaaa (Finnish for ”The World Sinks” with some additional ’a’ characters, possibly to emphasize the dramatical aspect, who knows) is a 19-minute follow-up to Maailma Kohoaa (”The World Ascends”), so the music is again heavily focused on ambient and psychedelic atmosphere overall, just like its predecessor.

Maailma Uppoaaaa has just one, long track in which the actual black metal(ish) material doesn’t start until eight minutes or so, after Klemi’s cryptic and symbolic lyrics that are being proclaimed with some interesting ambient material in the background - the same flute melodies can be heard on Hiljaiset Sanat which was released on the same day as this tape.

Once the kind-of-intro is finished, Circle of Ouroborus delivers a very sweet piece of ’dreamy metal ambience’ as the band seems to often call it - and I couldn’t categorize it better. Once again Circle of Ouroborus manages to come up with unique guitar melodies (somewhere between melancholy and totally psychedelic weirdness), wailing, clean and surprisingly in-key singing this time and bombastic, reverb-filled drums as usual. After the drums disappear, Maailma Uppoaaa falls back in to the ambient territories, in a rather same way as the song started, but now also with a tremolo-fired, soothing guitar track in the background.

The result of this all is a great composition of something that hasn’t been done before, and the band has again succeeded in creating something utterly weird yet beautiful. In the high standards of which Circle of Ouroborus is known in my books, I can, however, say that Maailma Uppoaaa is not the best offering by the band, but a great addition to anyone’s collection if they are willing to hear something different - that is, if you manage to find this anywhere, let’s hope for a re-release with Maailma Kohoaa.