Finland's most ancient purveyors of Doom Metal, Spiritus Mortis, are back with a vengeance! Seven years have passed since their previous offering The God Behind The God, also their first featuring ex-Reverend Bizarre vocalist Albert Witchfinder. The fourth album The Year Is One is a mirror to your childhood's occult fantasies. It is what you thought you heard when listening to your favorite headbanging music - even though those bands actually sang about driving fast cars, sex and drugs, whereas Spiritus Mortis' material really does deal with black magic and necrophilia. It is as heavy and evil as one can get without slipping away from the world of pure old school heavy metal. Prepared with the kind of passion and time-consuming concentration that is fitting of the Doom Metal genre, The Year Is One was several years in the making, and the dedication is palpably present in the music. The band's roots in Dio-era Sabbath sounds are there, but the men play with a heavy-handed, yet melodic vigour rather unusual in the genre . Albert Witchfinder's voice carries a newfound joy of expression, and he delivers his bedtime stories about demon summoning and corpse violation as if possessed by evil genius.
