Pekka
Where Hell Begins is the debut EP of the Finnish death/thrash band Nowen, at the time of these recording sessions functioning as a duo, but since grown into a full line-up. The main man of the group was an acquaintance of mine from a couple of metal related discussion forums, so obviously I had to buy his record to support the good work.
Brutal, hard riffing assault is the name of the game here, and the tightly executed riffs indeed manage to carry most of the songs to the finish line, aided by the extremely effective drum work of Ville Vehviläinen, the thrash beat sometimes slipping into a blast beat and more complex death metal patterns, and always rich in fills.
The furious opener Pathetic Existense and the almost epic multi-part five minuter Breaking Point are both pretty great, and after Illusions lowers the standard a bit, the title track launches into another great riffing and drumming fest. With Pain is almost a weird one in this bunch as it actually contains some rather nice guitar melodies, of course framed by some more blast beating madness. It also has the only clean guitar parts of the EP, if I remember right the sound reference used in the studio was mentioned to be Beneath the Remains.
The two main problems of this recording are the sound that could benefit from some extra bottom and the rather bland growls of mastermind Mikko Lappalainen. I believe at least the first problem is solved on the two full lengths, perhaps I should check them out as well.
If you can find this somewhere, give it a listen!