With some promotional tag lines stating this was ‘Extreme Finnish Symphonic Metal’, I grabbed this promo right away as anything symphonic’ gets my attention, and I had never heard of this band before, so a new find in the genre is always a positive. And I’m glad I did, this is really good stuff.

The band has been around for a while with one album, Obsidian under their belt, and imagine a slightly more aggressive and symphonic version of say, Sweden’s Skyfire mixed with Dimmu Borgir and  Children of Bodom and that will get you in the wheelhouse of Abstrakt’s high energy, polished, uptempo, and very symphonically tinged sound

I mention the symphonics because the keyboards of co-founder (along with vocalist Nightderanger) and guitarist Azul Corax are some of the better keyboards I’ve heard. Again, imagine a more experimental Skyfire on steroids and backed by a full choir, and you get some really rousing stuff.

Now the songs writing and riffs don’t quite match the magnificent keyboards (I mean check out the starts of “From Chaos to Creation”,  “Prophet of Fire”and “Inferno”), but they are close. There’s some meandering and some overly long songs ( i.e the 8 minute, closing title track), but at times, they do deliver some very good, nearly great stuff here and there such as “Etherstorms”,  the latter stages of “The Great Chasm of Humanity” (both giving me a heavy Skyfire vibe) and above single, the dramatic, Dimmu Borgir ish “Radiant Darkness”, all hinting at something potentially special.

With a little more focus and fat trimming, these guys could really be a band to look out for in the Finnish scene, they are clearly very talented and confident, and the keyboards alone make them a very alluring act and if they get the songwriting on par, look out!

[Visit the band's website]

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