The biggest tip one can give to a band is to never rely completely on a closed musical formula. It means that you can create your own path without respecting limits into an eroded and known musical genre. As long as a band or musician can create without caring to boundaries or defined models, Metal will live on strong, even during hard times. And the Finnish quartet SAASTA seems to understand these words, because “Black | Death | Doom” shows creative moments. The production worked on a way to build a massive and nasty sonority, but with things being defined and clean to the point of improving the understanding of what’s being played. Of course, the tunes can sound overloaded sometimes (it’s a demand of the musical path they follow), but’s very good. And the artwork for the cover is really disturbing.

Musically, the band works on a trench on Death/Black Metal (remember that the order in the labels aren’t for free, because here is a Death Metal act with many Black Metal influences), or in other words, it’s a Blackened Death Metal in the Finnish way. But the difference comes from one thing: a clear sense of Doom Metal is on the mix, what means that they use many slow rhythms, creating a form of music that sounds aggressive and disturbing at the same time, with an abrasive energy flowing from their songs. And it’s very good to hear such form of music.

All the four songs are very good, indeed, and it’s not hard to like “Black | Death | Doom”. “Stygian Grey” is a short and disturbing instrumental that opens the EP and introduces “Black | Death | Doom”, a massive and slow paced song with nasty guitar riffs (in a way that resembles HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST sometimes) and good technical work. On “Sickness” the fans will have another song plenty of Doom Metal traces, with very good bass guitar and drums moments on the rhythmic conductions. And “Murhattu” is a moment of contrasts of fast and slow parts, enabling the vocals to show very good grunts and shrieks.

In the end of all, “Black | Death | Doom” stands as a very good release, and shows that SAASTA really has a lot to offer to Blackened Death Metal fans (in reality, for extreme Metal fans in general).

Listen to the EP here: https://saasta.bandcamp.com/album/black-death-doom