Following up their 2002 mini-CD In No Sense Innocence, Germany's FALLEN YGGDRASIL present us with Building Up A Ruin To Come. This album is 9 tracks of old-school, riff-heavy death metal that incorporates plenty of melody and elements of thrash and black metal to give it a somewhat unique sound that will hopefully develop with time.

The album opens peacefully, an acoustic guitar is plucked melodically while birds chirp in the background. Suddenly, this peaceful scene is shattered with the blast of a shotgun and we break straight into the album's title track. The intro riff is tremelo-picked, almost black-metal style and these riffs are common throughout the album on tracks like Babylonian Prayer, where they contrast with rhythm-heavy sections that tend to be slower and doomier.

The influence of the old Swedish sound is obvious on the album, the opening riff of Bequest is reminiscent of At The Gates, and there's hints of Massive Killing Capacity era Dismember groove on Babylonian Prayer and I Burn. The band manage to bring these sounds together well even though things occasionally sound a little disjointed. Vocalist Simon's tortured wails even have a Swedish tinge, and in some places they reminded me of Tiamat's Johan Edlund on the excellent Clouds album. On the whole, the production on the album is reasonably good but it does tend to sound a little hollow at times.

At 34 minutes, Building Up A Ruin To Come is quite a short album, and the 8 tracks on offer are short but to-the-point. While Building Up A Ruin To Come isn't an outstanding or incredibly unique album, FALLEN YGGDRASIL are still developing their sound and on this their first full-length record they show a lot of potential. If they can continue to evolve and blend the different elements of their music into a more unique whole, they could well be a band to watch in the future.