Since a tiny stone has been thrown my way that I am not being critical enough in my reviews, I will try and get that objectivity going. (Or was this stone thrown more collectively towards MR staff as a whole? Food for thought …) Let’s hope I do last more than a week. To be fair then, in this batch of reviews I tried looking critically at both the band I can recite by heart (Lake of Tears new live album) and then something I have never heard before, or even about. Finnish Taatsi received the luck of that draw, me hoping that “nature mystical black metal” from otherwise brutal house Forever Plagued could be mighty interesting.

Season of Sacrifice does provide a steady barrage of distorted riffs, simplistic drumbeats and something that sounds like subdued keys providing atmospheric and spacey leads. (Maybe there are no keys on this at all, and some of the layered guitars just sound cleaner). Sure, both tracks are raw, but have a definite tangible melodic touch to them. The vocals are not nasty, too high or too shrill, and fit in together with this “medium rare” style. The question I would love to ask the folks behind Taatsi is simple, however. What is the band’s reason for being? I am totally on board with not every demo needing to be a 2-track rare unheard heretofore gem, but somehow Season of Sacrifice is sort of going through the motions of the genre. This did not have to be revolutionary, but the problem is Season of Sacrifice did not make me really look forward to checking Taatsi further works. The best moments is the muscly and convincing guitars on the title track around 1’40”, the affirmative melody around 1’50” on Cult of the Northstar and lazy blasting which serves as a background to squeeze the most out of the guitars at the end of that track.

Otherwise, if you own all of Sargeist, Nattfog and October Falls releases and consider it a duty to collect all cult black-and-white tape releases from obscure melodic black metal bands, then by all means give Taatsi a shot. I don’t think you will be disappointed, but it is unlikely you will be excited out of your pants either. And if you really want an exciting 2-3 track demo on a black-and-white tape in melodic black metal I would recommend Draugsang, something that sadly did not live beyond the demo.