With ASPHODELUS we have a pretty new and young band from the Karelian area of Finland. The three-piece was started under the moniker CEMETARY FOG in 2012 already before they changed their name after three demos and an EP on Iron Bonehead. The same label also released the first EP as ASPHODELUS. A demo later, Terror From Hell Records took care of the Finnish youngsters and released their first full length album “Stygian Dreams”. Musically, the band is indulged to a kind of music that was most popular in the times they were just born or even before that. “Stygian Dreams” made me think of AMORPHIS telling “Tales From The Thousand Lakes” or early TIAMAT in the era of “Clouds”. I can hardly deny that I liked those old albums in the days of yore, and still like them today. It must be my devotion for the combination of Doom, Death and dark melodies. Thus I had a certain pleasure listening to ASPHODELUS. Songs like ‘Lamentation Of The Lost Soul’, ‘The Hourglass Infernal’ or ‘Delusions Ad Astra’ are like a throwback in the mid of the 1990s. The keyboards in ‘Stygian Dreaming’ really remind me so hard of the already mentioned AMORPHIS masterpiece, I thought about playing the Kantele I never had – just joking… With ‘Sleep Of Eternity’, we have a song that is more based in classical Doom Metal, while the final ‘Where Freezing Spirits Fall’ would perfectly fit in the melodic Death Doom Metal era of the 1990s again. With “Stygian Dreams”, ASPHODELUS have created a pretty nice first full length album that really appeals to all those, who dig the albums I already referred to. Yet anybody into doomy, yet melodic and harmonic Metal should lend these young Finns an ear, since there is a promising band to discover. To check ’em out, visit: www.facebook.com/asphodelusofficial, or their label at: www.tfhrecords.com