Another excellent reissue fired by Terror From Hell, a label specialising in classic extreme sounds, is this fourth work by the Finnish trio, accustomed to walking through cemeteries shrouded in the thick blanket of fog that cools the bones and wakes the souls of the dead. The band, active since 2012, had previously released a trio of demos for Iron Bonehead Productions, who also released this ep strictly on vinyl, now out in CD version for the Vicenza-based label. Cemetery Fog are J. Filppu,J. Väyrynen and V. Kettunen and they play death metal with doom/dark overtones, a genre that, in the early nineties, gave us milestones such as the first albums by Katatonia, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, and their Towards The Gates sounds like a record released in that period. Dirty production, dark and funereal atmospheres, long parts of slow and obscure doom/death that, if it doesn’t leave much in the way of personality, stakes everything on the atmospheres, creating music with a high level of charm. The heart of this work are three medium-long tracks, consisting of slow, deathly riffs, melancholic piano turns and the pained growl, accompanied at times by clean vocals, which are honestly the weak point of Hamina’s band’s music. Much better when the obscure growl rises over the slow pace of the sound and it really seems to get lost in obscure cemeteries, where amidst the fog, tomb statues rise up and recall fallen angels, melancholic altars raised to the other world, a painful and dramatic passage from life to death, which leaves no hope and envelops us in the most tragic darkness. Prominent among the songs is Shadow of Her Tomb, a remarkable march towards the oblivion of purgatory, a track that would have made its mark on the track list of the masterpiece that is As The Flower Withers, the dying bride’s first full length. Fascinating music, at least for those still in love with the catacomb sound of the early nineties, in the meantime we wait for good news, enjoying this leap in time. (A.Centenari – MetalEyes 29/12/2015)

2014 – Iron Bonehead Productions 2015 – Terror From Hell Records