I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you which major Norwegian Black Metal band Rimfrost sound like, so let's take it for granted that the Swedish threepiece play a version of said band's frostbitten grimness that's surprisingly catchy and headbangable. Riffs drive the music, as you might expect, but it's in-your-face and enjoyably fist-pumping stuff with a good amount of twists, from subtle time changes to blasty bits to melodic ambient interludes - all included in the opening title track. The Black Death is a bit blastier, the drums threatening to drown out the (single) guitar in a charming sort of manner, whilst The Raventhrone allows the guitar to explore unconvincingly-titled frontman Hravn Decmeister's riff repertoire a little more extensively, verging on early Melodeath territory before going all slow and epic like an even more over-the-top than usual Amon Amarth. Legacy Through Blood tries very hard to be a grandiose Bathory hymn and largely succeeds, then Mountains Of Mána gets back to the riffage - no surprises to be found here.

Blame it on the good mood that the band have caught me in, but although this is not at all original it's very well-played and enjoyable. Drummer Throllv Väeshiin enthusiastically beats his drums like they've insulted his mum - the sheer joy for what they're doing comes through despite the icy atmospherics. It's not really cold and frostbitten at all - you can imagine the band fighting to keep grins off their corpepainted faces as they frantically pound it out. The production's clean, the songs are powerful and individual, the album is varied and anything but repetitive; really, there's not much to be said against it at all. Subsequent listens reveal that, far from the mess that it seems to be at first, there actually is a brain controlling the songwriting, pulling the various threads together and pounding them into unison with links of steel. It wouldn't take much to call this progressive, really, although it's not quite there - Rimfrost are far too much in love with their base sound to go changing it up just yet. The trio are capable of producing something quite transcendental with the promise shown here; for the moment, this is sure to put a smile on plenty of cold faces.