While it's not the worst release you'll ever hear, there's nothing that spectacular about it. The music on Musta Kaipuu definitely gives off the whole Satanic cold and grim feel to it, but musically some of the material does leave a lot to be desired. The opening track, "Piina", is phenomenal thanks to the guitar riffs throughout that give it a heaviness that really shines through. After that, the release starts to go downhill fast with plenty of speed bumps of tracks that are good all littered along the way. Take "Unohdetut Kasvot, Unohdettu Ääni" as the perfect example. The guitars are set up a lot like "Piina," though the distortion is higher and the quality of the song seems a little lower. Aside from that, you have a rather fast paced track with some killer Black Metal riffs that doesn't seem to just drone on endlessly in a boring, repetative manner that "Haudanvarjo" presented. Given this, it shouldn't be shocking that the other longer track on here, "Sieluhaaska," is very well done and also has a nice flow to it from start to finish without any repetition to really kill the song outside the very last set of guitar chords on it, but that's moreso for effect to close the song with. The same can literally be said about the closing instrumental track "Menneiden Kaiku."

"Oi Hallis Kotimaa" is perhaps the oddest track of the bunch, utilizing singing, and a chorus that would best fit in a Viking Metal act like Tyr, making this already pretty bad song sound even more lame, but at least this is the only track to get cheesy. But the funniest, and perhaps lamest thing of all, is the track "Pohjanportti." Instead of just not including this boring track altogether, it was placed on here but is incomplete, as if the band realized while recording it that they need to just stop and scrap it, leaning more towards the concept that this release was mostly put together of cannon fodder. These are really the only "hit the skip button on the play as soon as possible" type tracks on this release. Sure some of the others on here, like "Vuohenlahko" and "Sieluhaaska," kind of feel as if the band really tried to stretch the track lengths and do get a little boring, at least they show a little more common sense musically.

To put it bluntly, if you're a die hard Black Metal fan, chances are you're going to pick this one up anyhow and run around saying it's one of the best B-side compilation discs that were made available in this style. if you do, awesome, more power to you, but unfortunately if you're not too into the whole underground Black Metal scene, there's nothing really here you haven't heard before. With "Piina," "Unohdetut Kasvot, Unohdettu Ääni," "Marraskuussa" and the instrumental track "Menneiden Kaiku" really being the only tracks that are worth it, and the rest hitting the ground hard as a pretty standard quality of music.

written by Jason Thomas Weiss

Playing time: 58:10