Great friggin' album.

Indeed

Absolutely; quite possibly the best Amorphis release for me, although I've always been more inclined to think that of Tales...

It's definitely an interesting side to Amorphis that I'm not used to hearing from them quite as often. I do enjoy my standard death metal every once in a while, however I prefer their later melodic work way more. That's just me though.

This is exelent, old school album, maybe most unique in their carear, more meaning then rest of band works 1992, lost Karealia, colapse of ussr, ideas of getting back stoller Theriory, symbolic album, even musicaly I prefere Tailes Of The 1000 Lakes, but this is awesome to

Goddammit I love this album so much. Definitely among my favorite "old school" death metal albums

Ok, I find this one to be just another case of a debut album mania. While it ain't bad, and I do admit it has some hints of what the band would turn out to be on subsequence releases, this is just your average death metal played in order to garner some attention, a fan-base. Amorphis had the profesionalism and insight to do much better, but like any other new band, they needed to record something that would fit with a trend, to garner a solid fan-base and then to start experimenting with other sounds.

In many ways, this path seems very similar with Paradise Lost's debut, Therion's first three or Ulver's first three (with the exception that Ulver was actually quite good in playing black metal, even though they deny ever playing this genre). The Karelian Isthmus is not a bad album, far from it, but it is aeons behind Tales From A Thousand Lakes. It is just in a completely other league. I would recommend this album only for the die-hard fans of the band, to see the very inception of this band. Amorphis was not the kind of band that would take the world by storm with their debut, they are the kind of band that started to become solid with time.

Granted, rather standard DM release but still has some really damn good and catchy riffs.

A very "Bolt Thrower" thing to it with a glimpse of something that i would later identify as "the amorphis aesthetics".

Reaching halfway into the album everything is already very repetitive em dull without a clear cool logic to the flow of things.

And as ManiacBlasphemer said, i would only recommend to to die hard fans. Its a very OK DM album.