Pounding their way out of sunny Spain, LURKING EVIL are not your standard Black Metal band from the frozen woods of Northern Europe. This means, much to my pleasure, that we are not subjected to an album of pretentious songs about the aforementioned woods, and although they come dangerously close to this with weather based tracks such as "Winds Of Solitude" and intro track "The Fog" at least it's not something along the lines of "Chewing On The Snow Covered Bark In The Forests Of Misharakh" - do not try and find that song, Norway's finest haven't got round to writing it yet.

The nest bonus is that this is Blackened Thrash so we have the driving rhythms of Thrash to accompany Orlok's rasping vocals, which gives the album more variation and interest than IMMORTAL have ever delivered, that's not a slight to Abbath and co., it's just a combination of honesty and boredom.

Essentially, the album is 12 tracks of a relatively short nature with some decent Thrash based rhythms and some (very) slightly above average Black Metal rasps. It is noticeable that the instrumentals only veers towards Black Metal rarely, noticeably in "The Dark Paths Of The Other Side" There's some nice moments dotted around the place, the opening of "The Dark Paths..." is very eerie sounding and much more down tempo before bursting into Blackened riffs and maniacal drumming. The band are more than capable of slowing it down too. "Rites Of The Deepest Horror" and the instrumental album closer "Winds Of Solitude" (which is a brilliantly atmospheric end track) add a bit of variation to the predominantly high energy Thrash riffs that make up the majority of the album.

It's still not mind-blowing but there's reason enough to suggest that this debut effort won't be the last we'll hear of these Spaniards, although it's hardly likely they'll be ruling the strip in Ibiza anytime soon.