Review by Stellarium on March 23, 2024.

For the death/doom fans, this was probably quite appreciated back in '93. If you'd either missed your chance to hear "Karelian Isthmus", and weren't one of the lucky ones able to acquire the "Disment of Soul" demo Cassette, this was your best chance to hear this hot new Finnish prospect that were being banded around as the next "big thing".

Re-issuing some tracks that have only been around for a year is always a head-scratcher. Especially when the material is relatively sub-par in comparison to the forthcoming masterpiece that is not only infinitely better, but in an entirely different style. This EP is a somewhat problematic offering to the Amorphis back catalogue, in the sense that there's really no clear reason for it to exist in its final form.

With all of this in mind, the tracks aren't worthy of being buried and forgotten. The consistency of them foreshadows an ability that time and again was displayed by the group. They may be skeletal at times, but they're extremely necro. The Abhorrence cover remains fantastic, and the cavernous echo of the guitars and the drums will not be of disappointment to fans of true death metal. There are hints of melody and operatic effects layered underneath the ferocity of these compositions. The trademark growls are the heaviest they would ever be, and the speed is somewhere between early Katatonia and Opeth.

The songs on here haven't yet formed Voltron, but they are the bastard hybrid of the raw, callous sounding demo songs, and the well produced label debut. I'll concede that given a better production does help the songs, but maybe the point is entirely lost among me as to why this needed to be done so shortly after the tracks were originally released - ESPECIALLY as they were still available to be purchased. It's common knowledge that this was supposed to be a split release with Incantation, as a stop gap recording between the debut album, and the upcoming "Tales from the Thousand Lakes". However, there are two very solid reasons why this remains an outlier.

The band had already moved away from the death / doom metal sound that they played in 1991/92, and rather than this be an early teaser of upcoming material (which most good EP's should), it's a step back to an already out-dated Amorphis sound, and would have confused any perspective listeners back in 1993, as they'd have likely picked up the next release a few months later and wondered what the hell they were hearing.

That isn't to say that the material is bad. Relapse at least found a way to put the cancelled tracks into the public domain, and later released them as bonus tracks onto later editions of "The Karelian Isthmus", but they should have remained as a definitive addition to the era they represented. As such I struggle to see this as something more than an opportunity to sell the same music as a year before, but with the demo tracks cheekily tempting fans, as this is their only official re-release. Yet the track "Disment of Soul" never got an official release, and they could have added it on here as well to make it significantly more tangible.

Rating: 7 out of 10