All the way from Slovakia come the Lunatic Gods with ‘The Wilderness’, to bring us an original blend of innovative death, dark and atmospheric metal. Not only is the music somewhat different from your average death metal band; the booklet as well deviates from what one normally would expect. Painter Milan Hrabovsky made this weird landscape of zombies that surround a body that has a happy puppet waving on his hand. Inside the booklet we discover quite graphic photos of the Second World War. The record opens with ‘Curse’; a surprisingly different-than-usual death metal track. Not only does it contain an atmospheric refrain with clean vocals, acoustic guitars and an organ; but halfway down the track the song gets another twist when the drums go solo. ‘Tormenting World’ introduces itself as a hyper-blasting death metal track and then suddenly introduces acoustic guitars while the drums blast on. It even contains an acoustic solo on top of raging guitars. Songs like ‘Fallen Beauty’ show another side of Lunatic Gods.

It could easily have been a lost track of Tiamats ‘Wildhoney’. I could go on describing every track because of the sheer diversity of musical styles they incorporate into their death metal base, but it may be the same thing as blabbing the butler did it. What I do need to mention is the way the album is divided in two parts. Part one is ‘Circles of Blindness’ and part two is ‘The Wilderness’ containing the title track and an intro and outro played by sitar player Jirko Dohnal, lifting the record to an unforeseen level. Although the production is somewhat harsh on the sitar parts and sometimes the vocals, the overall sound is one of clarity. I especially enjoy the honest drum sound and the alteration of clean and distorted guitars. ‘Curse’ and ‘Tormenting World’ are definitely highlights on this record, along with ‘Doomsday’ and ‘The Wilderness’. Some tracks do lack a few original riffs but the diversity makes the album entertaining from beginning to end.