Considering that "Five Pointed Tongue" is the debut full-length by a band with less than three years of existence under their belts, the first Saros album ever is pretty damn good. It is a cold slab of avant garde black metal, a Norwegian-sounding onslaught of fuzz, chunk, growl and blast.

Fascinatingly, Saros isn't a Scandinavian metal band. They are from the United States (San Francisco, to be exact). And even more interestingly, the members of Saros come from punk and thrash, not epic-length black metal. Sure, there are some thrash elements - this is black metal, after all, a style of music directly descended from early thrash and death metal (Celtic Frost or Venom, anyone?). But you'd never know this band's origins or influences just by listening to "Five Pointed Tongue."

More than anything, Saros combine the sounds of Enslaved and Epoch of Unlight: rhythmic black metal with an emphasis on repeated guitar riffs, a slight technical edge, and more attention paid to song-writing pyrotechnics than pure metal attitude or message. This is extreme metal for the patient listener, five tracks that nonetheless constitute a full-length album (two tracks exceed ten minutes, and a third comes close). Elements of virtually all shades of extreme metal (save only nu and core) are present here, blended almost to the point of emulsification.

"In Arctic Exile" kicks things off with an epic amount of thrash guitar, harsh vocals, and long riffs repeated almost unto the point of ambiance. It's not the sort of extreme metal that is going to satisfy everyone, especially those used to black metal's more high-octane representatives. "F Subzero" (I can't quite tell whether that is an allusion to temperature or a juxtaposition of two Super Nintendo references) sounds surprisingly like HammerFall or Stratovarius as it begins, but quickly returns to the double-bass and atmospheric growls that exemplify Saros. "Sleeping Beast" is a good song, although it doesn't really do anything more than cement Saros' already established sound. "Origins" introduces some acoustic guitars and slow doomy riffs. And the disc's closing track, "Collapse of the Tower," begins dark and thrashy (and with prevalent acoustic guitars), only to come out of nowhere with melancholic clean black metal vocals and guitar solos.

The album cover is catching, further invocative of Enslaved but not necessarily a good way to tell what the band sounds like. The sound quality on "Five Pointed Tongue" fits the music itself perfectly, with plenty of clarity but very little artificiality. Five tracks do pass swiftly, despite above-average song length, and if not for the fact that there are five songs on an album called "Five Pointed Tongue," it would have been nice to hear more than forty minutes worth of music from Saros (something to look forward to on the band's sophomore effort, perhaps?). And the meandering nature of this four-piece's music won't appeal to everyone.

Saros debuting with "Five Pointed Tongue" is like Enslaved coming out of nowhere to release "Below the Lights" without prior experience or discography. It's not a perfect album, but it is so solid and professional, so established in sound, you'd swear the band had been together for longer than two years. And who knows what another few years are going to bring. "Five Pointed Tongue" is definitely one of the surprise debuts of the year, and I am certainly looking forward to seeing what these four Nordic-sounding Americans come up with next.