Trimonium manage the tricky feat of sounding pretty familiar yet hard to pin down. The blast beats scream death metal, the vocals cry out for a little of the blackness, and the riffs flit between the two genres, tossing in a heavy dollop of strident power metal riffs to boot. "The Wisdom of the Crying Stones" (???) is perhaps the purest example of this cross-genre tri-chotomy. Galloping triplets race across a horizon of blighted vox and mid-paced drum rolls. Unfortunately, the lyrics in the booklet were printed in extremely blurry white-on-blue print, so I have no idea what to make of the absurdity of the song title. The rest of the album favors trite old-school metal tropes such as "Return From the Battle", "Waste of Blood" and "Choose the Weapon", so we can safely put forth the theory that we're dealing with epic medieval war material here.

It's with increasing frequency that we've seen the more extreme forms of metal mixed with traditional and power metal standards, but more often than not these alchemical experiments consist of a power / symphonic band slapping a few heavier elements into their own rote sound. Trimonium are one of the first I've heard to hit from the opposite angle and do it well. Sure, "epic" has always been a part of black metal in particular, but never before have I heard the influences blended so fluently and with such an even split: _Son of a Blizzard_ sees the likes of Emperor, Bolt Thrower and even the timeless sagacity of classic Maiden smelted together into a two-fisted blade which -- in its inventiveness and fearless cheek -- slices neatly through the competition.