After 30 years of their existence, Finnish Death Metal veterans FESTERDAY finally decided to unleash a full length album on their old and new fans, titled "iihtallan", released earlier this year on January 4^th, through Seasons Of Mist. The album on paper looks lengthy due to its tracklist of 15 songs, but it clocks just about 50 min.

The album starts with an eerie 53 sec sound of a ghostlike figure hovering around with horror movie background music, and with song titled "The Last Night of the Earth", you know exactly what you are getting into. "Edible Excrement" shoes you the old school Death Metal gem that FESTERDAY are, with their thick groovy riffs, and the typical guttural vocals, followed by fast paced blastbeats like rocks falling from mountain landslides. "Tongues for Rotten Kisses" has some really cool guitar squeak and riffs, and the song has a perfect mid-tempo to create the eerie tension. While "Kill Your Truth" and "Control Not Your Soul" are full of mid-tempo Headbangable riffs, "Dreaming for the Dead" is a slower sludgier track. "Vomiting Pestilence" is a full throttle fast paced Brutal Death Metal song with old school feel to it. The riffs and drum beats are fast paced and the chaotic growling vocals work really perfectly here. It has shades of CARCASS (the name of the band being inspired from one of their songs), DYING FETUS and AUTOPSY style, and that probably can be said for the rest of the album as well.

The 2 part song in "Flowers of Bones" and "Flowers of Stone", each clocking 1:44 and 1:50 respectively, the former the fast paced and chaotic one and the latter one more juicier and headbangable, are ones for the collectors' item if songs could have been collected in physical forms and not necessarily the entire album ! "Into the Void" offer you both sides of the coin, or the riff should I say, with the song oscillating between mid-tempo long riffs, and slower juicy riffs. It is one for the folks who like to air guitar while they listen to Metal. "Constructive Decomposition" brought images of sludgy filthy garbage travelling down the streams of the drainage system. It is raw, slow, filthy and everything, a good old school Death Metal has to offer. "Gravelove" has this guttural feel to it, right from its beginning of the song, and the song oscillates its pace in waves which works just fine for the song, with its great sharp eerie riffs. "The Human Race Disgrace" is one hell of a pounding train wreck with its fast paced air guitar riffs, still maintaining the old school atmospheric Death Metal feel to it. The cheekily titled "Your Saliva My Vagina" is less impressive with its main riff, but the juicy groovy riffs have some slam feel to it, but the lads get it right by not overdoing it. The album ends with a chaotic round off of its sound in "Let Me Entertain Your Entrails", which is for me just an average song.

"iihtallan" is a multidimensional old school Death Metal album in that, it offers you a lot of different things, but the old school riffage will stand out and will make it to your playlist repeatedly. It is no classic, but for a 30 year old band whose vocalist and the 2 guitarists have been all the way through the journey, this is nothing short of a masterpiece, but may not appeal to anybody outside its intended audience. But I don't think, anybody's complaining.