Usually, when I think of Finnish doom metal, it's funeral-doom and deathdoom bands like Skepticism, Shape Of Despair, Thergothon, Minotauri, Dolorian, stuff like that. Immense, crushing slabs of depressing ultradoom drenched in nihilism and sadness. Noone does that shit better than the Finns, methinks. Then, out on the periphery of Finnish doom metal, you have Unholy, a band that existed from the late 1980's through the beginning of this decade and who turned that sloooow miserable Finnish doom sound into something hallucinogenic and unpredictable. Nobody quite sounded like Unholy, but Finland has continued to bring us some other oddball doom outfits that are obviously following in Unholy's footsteps, like Umbra Nihil and the ultra-bizarre Aarni. Another band that we can aqdd to this tradition of pushing the weirdness envelope is Astral Sleep, whose debut album Unawakening came out recently on the Russian doom metal label Solitude Productions. The crux of Astral Sleep's music is deathdoom, slow creeping deathdoom that echoes the classic downer trudge of Skepticism and Thergothon, and there's enough depressing heaviosity on this album to satisfy any deathdoom junkie. But Astral Sleep infuse their deathdoom with other sounds that turn this into something much more unique and challenging, incorporating baroque, almost Medieval-sounding melodies, choruses of demonic grunting and hellish distorted screams, weird electronic effects, creepy horror-movie soundtrack music, stoned psych-guitar leads and Pink Floyd-esque soloing, parts where the band breaks off into an throbbing 80's rock instrumental before dropping back in with crushing doom riffage, lots of cool interplay between clean guitar and distorted doom, recordings of seagulls and waves crashing on a beach, delicate acoustic folk and sweeping Tangerine Dream keyboards, all arranged into multiple "movements" across epic 12+ minute songs. The band also makes weird detours into 70's style proto-doom worship a la Pentagram and Sabbath, or break out a harmonica all Neil Young-like over a creeping doom riff, and the singer keeps things interesting too, going from deep, raspy deathgrowls to super-dramatic opera crooning, and every once in a while will even bust out an awesome, insane Halford-esque falsetto scream. Whoa! These guys aren't as over the top and off-the-wall as Aarni, but the album weaves and winds through so many different parts and directions that anyone into mutant outsider doom will dig this bigtime.