The Supreme Force Of Eternity, Runemagick's first album was also the last I heard from them. I still have it somewhere in my collection, and if I recall it well, it was a mixture of Swedish black/death with some doom-elements. I got into that album mostly because of mastermind's Niklas Rudolfsson's affinity with the now defunct Swordmaster, who's first album I still thoroughly enjoy.

Anyway, this is Runemagick's tenth (!) album to date, so I suppose I have a lot of catching up to do. First off, this is straight up death-doom metal. Pretty beefy stuff with some good chugga riffs mixed with more atmospheric stuff. Pretty minimalistic at times and always sloooooooow. Not as slow as some of their peers, but you need some pretty decent riffs to keep people listening at his pace. And fortunately, Runemagick have those. It sometimes almost sounds like Entombed on 33 rpm.

At first I thought this album was all instrumental because it takes about 12 minutes before you actually hear the first vocals. After that, the music also speeds up a little so there's actually more variation than one would expect at first.

The overall atmosphere is pretty dark and sick. Pretty often an almost black-metal feel comes over the music which gives it a nice 'evil' edge which certainly harks back to the early days of this band and the whole genre as well. It's nice to see a band which can still evoke this gnarly feeling purely through their music.

So all in all, this album is a pleasant surprise. I can't really say if it sounds too much like their former albums (they release one every year, so there might be some sort of saturation) but while it doesn't sound overly original, it sounds honest. There's an overall feeling of dedication to this style of music  and it's executed perfectly.

People who like their death-doom raw and gnarly and full of atmospheric riffs, check this out. While it may not be the second coming of Christ (or Satan) it certainly is a quality release.