With their eight album the Finnish Nordic black pagan metal combo Catameniagot rid of the keyboard parts. Some other changes are that Olli Mustonen left the band because there were some problems with his vocal chords and he had lost his voice. From now on the lead vocals are shared between Ari Nissilä and Kari Vähäkuopus. And behind the drums we find a new guy, called Mikko Nevanlahti.

In my opinion Catamenia has not so much to do with 'true' black metal anymore; they mix death, heavy, black, folk and in a song like "The Last Day Before" even some metalcore. The song "Dominion" starts up-tempo with the regular blast beats and the screaming vocals, in the middle the clean vocals come along. Although there are no keyboards anymore, Catamenia still keeps their melodic parts. Fortunately most of the songs are up-tempo and still have enough heavy parts and do not go too soft. The band has chosen to use the clean parts more frequently and perhaps some of the (older) fans might not be too happy with it.

One of the softest songs is "Fallen". I don't hope this is where they want to go in the future. "Road of Bones" is a fast song with screaming and clean vocals; it is a kind of Faith no More song on high speed. They also chose to cover Faith no More's "From Out of Nowhere". After listening to it a couple of times, I must confess that it is not a real bad version and that they tried to give it a Catamenia style.

Final conclusion is that Catamenia did not make a bad record, but it seems that they have come to a point where they have to make a choice which way to go. The outcome is that not every song is equally strong and that is the worst part about the album. My suggestion is to make songs all in the style of "Uhrimalja" (Dimmu Borgir meets Faith No More), which is without a doubt the best song on the album.