Maligno captures realistic, choking paranoia on this track, the band's tight musical prowess combined with dramatic lyrics to evoke feelings of genuine unease. Just wait till you get to a passage of soaring howls, deep bellows, and sinister whispers all at once, and tell me you don't feel like a victim of schizophrenia. "Walk on Shadows" falls into your inner ear on the patter of rain and graceful clean guitars, before morphing with fluid ease into an explosive doom rocker. The epic kick-drums and pulsing chords will pump your blood like a pacemaker, and before you get a second's rest the song launches into expansive, cosmic stoner-rock territory. The desert sandstorm that is "At Last" slowly builds into a shredding-whirlwind of uptempo doom. The leads are blistering and the vocals are barely sane incantations of some sort. This is one of my favorites on the album, and comes highly recommended. "Buried Alive" piles on patient riff after patient riff, collapsing their listener under a heap of chugging retro-doom. An utterly tripped-out guitar solo mid-song will fry some minds, and I have a feeling this one could slowly cement itself as a Maligno hit indeed. "Slowburn" steps up to bat next, attacking with a song somewhere between the Sword's inherent kick-ass rocking and Sleep's drugged-up majesty. "The Never in Ice" strikes with dissonant notes and chilly ambient hum that adds a whole new dimension to Maligno's sound. Just before things get too unusual, sledgehammer, fist-pumping doom boxes your ears. The slick "Macabra" doesn't even bother to feature words; this elephantine instrumental features nothing but wicked guitar leads, gargantuan riffs, and thundering percussion. All of it leads right into closing song "Beyond the Eye," which starts with a psychedelic traditional doom aura not unlike Big Elf but soon gets much more sinister. It is like an acid trip that starts out pretty light but suddenly goes straight to Hell. If you don't believe me, check out the headbanging bridge with its banshee wails and dark, manic riffing. Excellent stuff!

All-in-all this is a very solid debut album. It seems like over the last year or so every genre of doom has seen a resurrection of classic values, and Maligno are no exception to this rule. The band takes the very best of classic, early Black Sabbath, and adds their own taste of the macabre to everything. The end result is not unlike a changed friend; you've known them forever, but something about him is new, and it just doesn't sit right. Unnerving, paranoid, and downright downtrodden, Maligno have created a fresh take on metal's earliest template. Three-and-a-half out of five stars.