The depressive metal label does not pay justice to Finnish Total Self Hatred. For sure, the founders A. and C. (has someone seen B.?) must not be too joyful, and as you can guess from the chosen name, task of the Northern band is that of translating feelings like despair, sadness, melancholy into music. But differently from the so called suicide/depressive acts, Total Self Hatred own a stronger intensity, that steers away from the ambient thinness of many similar productions (they often make use of blast beats and accelerations, “Spirituelles Equilibrium”, “Ruoska”). To say it all Total Self Hatred have more than something in common with the proper doom music, among which an effective though poor use of keys with a gothic face (“Sledge Hammered Heart”) and a frequent recurring to the double bass drums to strengthen the mid tempos. That does not deny the substratum remains black metal rooted, for the guitars edge (anyway never too freezing) and for the coarse vocal performance (which can even turn into a melodic moaning, “Mighty Black Dimensions”). From the writing point of view we may criticize a certain repetitiveness on background, also due to the songs length, but mostly corrected by a remarkable arrangements refinement, where it's impossible to distinguish the work made by the keys from the guitar layers, and in this sense a comparison with Dark Fortress seems appropriate. Compliments.

Fulvio Adile