Formed in that fiery year of 1993, Sweden FUNERAL FROST released two demos, 1994’s Midnight Speeches and 1995’s Demo 2, as well as a promo for their eventual debut album. That debut album, 1996’s Queen of Frost, sadly was to be the band’s only full-length, but its ancient fire still burns brightly today. Both triumphant and melancholic, violent and resigned, hysteric and finessed, Queen of Frost brazenly displayed the full swathe of FUNERAL FROST’s considerable arsenal. With a raw-yet-robust soundfield neither dampening nor exaggerating any of their dynamics, here did the Swedish trio spelunk in dungeons and raze battlefields alike, their screaming-into-the-nightsky sound surprisingly medieval and moody. Likewise, compared to so many of their blastbeating-all-the-time contemporaries, FUNERAL FROST shifted speeds often and never lingered too long in one, with the drums in particular ringing with authentically analog clarity. Add to this a subtle daubing of synths and Queen of Frost stands as a crucial tome for those into classic Arckanum, Kvist, Sorhin, and Norway’s Perished.