Throne of Katarsis: Helvete – Det Iskalde Mørket

This is the third offering from this Candelight-signed Norwegian duo. It’s pretty much a continuation from their Unholy Holocaustwinds EP and debut album An Eternal Dark Horizon in so much as the sound and production are very similar if not identical.

Usually that would be a bad thing but not here. Throne of Katarsis have achieved something that a ton of bands in the genre try to do but fail: be old school. As with their earlier releases, Helvete – Det Iskalde Morket is rammed full of black old school atmosphere with big, long, reverb-soaked riffs and vocals pinned down by a great drum sound featuring deep orchestral fills and rolls.

There are some nice subtle acoustic guitar parts creeping around underneath the electric ones that also add a ton of that cold and morbid magic. Other parts also show flashes of excellence with plentiful – although I hate to draw comparison – Burzum style riffs. Their trademark lengthy tunes make up the main bulk of this album, again with the shortest song a little over six minutes, the longest weighs in at seventeen minutes!

There was something about Helvete – Det Iskalde Morket that took me a while to figure out: there are only, for my tastes, three proper songs out of the five as the two longest ones seem to be just three or four long passages stuck together.

While I think Throne of Katarsis have experimented and expanded on their previous writings, the longer songs feel unnecessarily long and a little tedious. That said they make great music for questing (if you plan online games) and if you’re a big fan of the band I’m sure you’ll love it.

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Tags: 2009, Candlelight, Norway, Throne of Katarsis

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 07:37 and is filed under Black Metal Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.