The instruments are for real here; the guitars are chunky, multi-faceted and dominant; the drum section charismatic and rich, in spite of the fairly monotonous rhythms. There are other minute elements playing tricks in the music, some of which are ambient preludes, leading the listener through a dark sonic corridor into the king's room of Septic Mind's vast pyramid, where it all wonderfully explodes in one's face.

Three long tracks, all growled in Russian, embody Septic Mind's vision in the loudest and clearest fashion: bursting with enigmatic rapport, alluding to the funeral doom etiquette but not quite, delivering the heaviest sounds an amplifier can cope with without melting down, and beyond all that -- keeping their music metallic and interesting even though the very musical materials and stylistic approaches Septic Mind deal with, are easily prone to fall into the boredom pit, when handled by lesser minds.

Frankly, _Beginning_ (translated from the original Russian title, _Nat'chano_, the phonetic English writing for the Russian word) is one of the best modern funeral doom/death albums you can put your hands on, but not only doom/death and certainly not your casual doom/death album. Recommended!