Band:	Jumalhämärä
Album:	Resignaatio
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	October 18, 2010
A review by:	Troy Killjoy

01. Ecstasy In Blood - A Ballad
02. Storm Is Coming
03. Haul
04. 596
05. Resignaatio
06. Of Enlightenment And Righteousness Pt II

Black metal
Finland
Ahdistuksen Aihio Productions


Jumalhämärä is an extremely... well, extreme black metal band from Finland. So extreme they don't have so much as an official MySpace page. So extreme that, in their 14 years of headbanging, they have released only one full-length studio album. In case you were wondering, this is it.

After treading the path of a true underground black metal outfit (releasing demo tapes, a live album and some mini-CDs), Jumalhämärä are ready to take a stab at the genre's heavyweights, perhaps first getting a head start by overtaking countrymates Horna and Sargeist.

The album begins with an incredibly hazy guitar intro, then unleashes a no-frills, by-the-numbers black metal assault before calming down about halfway through "A Ballad", carrying the listener off into apocalyptic dreamlike sequences for essentially the remainder of the album. This is where the band really shines as a unit - when they slow things down, access their melodic side, and give in to their intrinsic jazzy progression. While not overly experimental (and therefore, not overly pretentious), there are definitely elements of surrealism, thanks to some wonderfully produced keyboard effects and somber vocal passages.

Fortunately Resignaatio is drenched in this imaginative nature, swaying from utter barbaric minimalism to poignant mollification, similar in a way to most Deathspell Omega works. The differing drum techniques (despite routine blastbeat abuse), utilization of droning choirs, and odd timing signatures makes Resignaatio a welcome addition to the Finnish black metal family. Undoubtedly unappealing to die-hard tr00 crusaders, Jumalhämärä still have what it takes to attract most black metal fans, possibly even acquiring fans of various extreme atmospheric and melodic genres in the process.