From their Facebook page, "TOMB OF FINLAND" got the first shovel full of soil into its mouth in the fall of 2009. Thousands of nights filled by misery and tons of tormented thoughts were gathered together. First nails to the coffin had been hammered. By the unholy thoughts of northern pagan mind, it felt so true and fresh after many years of straightforward Rock 'N Roll and production perfectionism. That was a natural process because a difficult season of tortured and painful life. It was digging a grave for itself without hands." Today, we are reviewing their sophomore effort "Frozen Beneath," which contains nine tracks.

"Dead Again" leads off the album. Following a short intro, the main riff roars in. It's a mid-tempo track in a low registry with some fast picked guitars alternating with chord strikes. The guitars and bass working together provide most of the melody as the harsh vocals rattle underneath. "From Here to Enternty" opens with some keys and then the guitars blend in with a slow moving sound. It's a good meld between the bleakness and sterility of Black Metal with the somber melodies you often hear in Melodic Death Metal. It's an easy listening riff that just works as it should. "Decaying in Silence" hears the wheels slow even further, allowing that lamenting sorrowful sound to just coat you mercilessly. The guitars build subtle melodies while the vocals mire in hopelessness.

"Beneath the Frozen Depravity" has a doleful opening, like the last rays of light fading over cold headstones in a cemetery. It picks up from there with a livelier riff and some spacy keys in the background. The guitars build an unconventional sound that gives the song a harrowing edge; at times as heavy as the thudding footsteps of a wooly mammoth lumbering over frozen ground. "Funeral Pyre" is a faster moving song, and with a very dark scope. There are subtle melodies, but overall this track is meant to dig deep into the blackness of while lies beneath, and perhaps, frighten small children. "Left to Die" enters with dual guitars, one clean and the other distorted, and a very depressive sound, as you might imagine from the title. The guitar work is great at really pushing this hopeless sound, and the low ranged vocals could be the last utterances before death.

"Mourning Chant" enters with a frail beauty-clean guitars and haunting vocal chants in the background. When the vocals enter the sound becomes thick and full. In a reprise, the intro sound returns for a spell before the heavy and moody sound takes us to the end. "Scattering Ashes" opens with a fast-picked guitar riff but settles into a plodding rhythm with ultra-low vocal utterances; almost as if the trees in the norther forest have awoken and started plotting revenge on humankind. It segues into "Into the Abyss," the closing track. As the title suggests, this instrumental falls deeply into the chasm of Doom Metal; a place where there is no light, no hope, and no salvation. It's a great ending song to sum up the album.

TOMB OF FINLAND have created their own monster of Melo-Death, Black and Doom Metal here with "Frozen Beneath." They paint bleak and desolate landscapes of endless grey cold, with all forms of life long past decay, and a solitary existence of life as the years pass one repeated day after another. Trapped in a world with no faith or reward, you are sentenced to this prison from which there is no escape.