Nordvrede – Hammerprofeti
Nordvrede make no excuses. They play the Black Metal they want to hear the way they like it. An ethos like that deserves respect especially when the music lives up to expectations and manages to successfully blend a modern sound with more traditional elements.
Utilising an early to mid-nineties sound and building their tunes solidly without feeling the need to show off and grab you with vanity riffing they take their time getting to the point. All too often in recent years bands seem to have burnt themselves out and sacrificed the better part of a full album for a good couple of fast tracks at the beginning. Nordvrede pace things well with medium long songs that never rush and always feel meticulously created.
‘Sorg og Aske’ kicks things off. The first minute or so builds perfectly and then drops away for the introduction of a fairly quick traditional riff with angst filled shrieking that is more typical of some depressive styles but works brilliantly. Things speed up a bit through the next section with spoken lyrics adding surprising contrast and integrity to the track. Like I mentioned before things are done at Nordvrede’s pace and it is a real compliment to their own music that the opener lasts above eight minutes and is not sparse or empty neither cluttered or messy – just total Nordvrede.
Next up ‘Knus Den Hellige Vilje’ begins more rapidly and more upbeat, stamping away as if inspired by distant WWII marching music. The vocals and percussion are significantly more snarling and aggressive here. ‘Carried by Wings of Iron’, like the cover, really hammers out what the band are capable of, with an old school riff underpinned with well timed functional drumming and quality rasping at a medium pace. Later on the guitars add excellent atmosphere with a haunting and echoing picked riff and mix that up with the initial one to close the song.
I find Nordvrede’s music thought provoking and grimly inspiring in a cold brutal fashion, as if I were forced to learn pure mathematics or quantum physics at Minotaur university. ‘Proclaiming the Preteen Evangelium’ displays a slightly more progressive side before ‘Og Hammeren Pryder Vaar Fane’ plunges us back into the brimstone cauldron. This is the band’s fastest outing and feels mighty swift after that previous tune, after a while it returns to more a familiar tempo. The last half of the song get epic and despondent in atmosphere.
Finally ‘Et Nordisk Hyl Fra En Gammel Skog’ provides a suitable mix of all the components heard through the album. To sum it up this is a more than worthy item for your collection that will last the test of time even with a new offering from the band due sometime soon. If you are looking for something a bit different or are getting tired of constant blast beats then I cannot recommend this enough.
Black Metal is dead. In the UK at least. Seeing as though it is the place that gave birth to the genre it is as fuckin’ useless a broke-dick dog. There is no scene to speak of, just the odd one or two equally useless bands trying in vain to mimic some of the more [...]
Opening with a song title of the length Bal Sagoth would be proud of (thankfully that’s as the only comparison to draw), the imaginatively titled ‘A Glimpse of the Image of Lucifer Gleaming Beyond the Subterraneous Black Sun’ marches forth. Mid paced, it stamps away with the precision of a well oiled Black Metal machine [...]