Reviews: SAT353
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We welcome the Swedish black metal band Golgata back to our pages roughly 18 months after they first caught our attention and admiration with their last album, 2020’s Tempel, which spawned comparative references to the likes of Skogen, Grift, and Fellwarden. The occasion of their return is a forthcoming third full-length named Ur Eld Och Aska, which will be co-released on July 7th by Satanath Records and Ketzer Records.
As the title implies, the album is a journey through fire and ash but it’s also a journey through time, inspired by the history and natural surroundings of the dark, forested region that gave birth to this duo. It has the capacity to scathe the senses in raw and unbridled fashion, but it’s equally powerful in its capacity to mesmerize and to transport listeners away from modernity and into a much older age, creating grim and haunting visions of yearning and sorrow.
And thus we’re proud to present today the album’s fourth track in the running order, a song named “Vagabond“, revealed through a lyric video in the band’s native tongue.
The ring of the track’s central riff, which follows its wandering course over a slow bass-and-drum rhythm, has a downcast and defeated mood. As the bass begins to growl and the drums grow more feverish, the music seems to become even more despairing. Strummed mandolin chords join in (a guest performance by Jonas Olsson), along with both scalding, serrated-edge snarls, deep roars, and solemn but soaring singing.
Like the imagery in the video, the music feels ancient, like arms reaching back to link with a medieval age. It also becomes more intense, as the guitar flickers like a bonfire and the vocals shriek above the thudding beats. Straight through to the brief, lyre-like instrumental at the end, the song weaves a spell, even if it’s one steeped in sorrow, loneliness, and regret.
Below we’ll also share with you the new album’s previously released title track, which presents another side of Golgata‘s music. It too becomes spellbinding, but it’s also more ravaging and glorious in its grim and grievous permutations — it pounds the heart and causes it to swell with passion. It also includes even greater vocal variety, thanks to the appearance of guest singer Mari Biäre Howerdal (who also appears on two other tracks).
https://www.nocleansinging.com/2022/06/13/an-ncs-video-premiere-golgata-vagabond/
Swedish band Golgata released the album "Ur Eld Och Aska" back in the summer of 2022, and extreme metal is the style explored on this production. It is a lo-fi sounding variety of the form we get here, with a general sound that by plan or design comes across as a low budget affair, a kind of sound often pursued by bands with a desire for having what is described as an honest sound. The music itself is a tight and vibrant variety of extreme metal with frequent lapses into doom metal landscapes and a liberal array of sparse, gentle interludes. The latter often come with a folk music touch and feel to them, and the harmony overlays and guitar solo runs in the metal parts of the album also strikes me as having a bit of a folk music melody tradition as an undercurrent here and there. An additional trait of note is the occasional use of choir-style vocal surges that adds a sacral, religious hymn like quality to the material when they appear. The lead vocals are of the spoken like and distorted variety though, in line with old and established extreme metal traditions. A production to seek out if a tight and vibrant variety of extreme metal with doom metal side steps and and old school honest sound is regarded as generally interesting.
In mid-June of last year we had the opportunity to premiere a video for a song from Ur eld och aska (“out of fire and ashes”), the then-forthcoming third album by the Swedish melodic black metal band Golgata, which was subsequently co-released by Satanath Records and Ketzer Records.
As we wrote then, the album (as suggested by its title) “is a journey through fire and ash but it’s also a journey through time, inspired by the history and natural surroundings of the dark, forested region that gave birth to this duo. It has the capacity to scathe the senses in raw and unbridled fashion, but it’s equally powerful in its capacity to mesmerize and to transport listeners away from modernity and into a much older age, creating grim and haunting visions of yearning and sorrow.”
We now have an opportunity to revisit the album, and to introduce it to people who might have overlooked it, through our premiere of a lyric video for its title track.
Many of the songs on Ur eld och aska are indeed capable of producing a spellbinding effect on listeners, and the title song is one of those, but it also presents another side of Golgata‘s songwriting. It’s ravaging and glorious in its grim and grievous permutations.
Immediately the drums and bass pound like big pistons, and the guitars rake and ring, twisting and wailing, creating moods of tension and despair. It’s an electrifying start, followed by riffing that roils and vocals that snarl with a serrated edge. As in the case of two other tracks, this one also benefits from the appearance of guest singer Mari Biäre Howerdal, whose heroic and harmonized singing gives the music an air of the ancient.
And in addition to all these sensations, the music also comes across as warlike, and even medieval.
For those who are just discovering Golgata, their history of releases began in 2015, but the duo of S. (guitars) and Niclas Ankarbranth (vocals, guitars, bass, drums) began writing their first songs back in 1994. As their recorded output has evolved across a trio of EPs and now three albums, they have created music that has moved in more melodic and atmospheric directions, but without abandoning the raw and aggressive intensity that has marked the traditions of Swedish black metal since the beginning.
The album Ur Eld Och Aska is available from the labels on jewel-case CD editions with an 8-page booklet, as well as digitally. We’ve include a full stream of the album below.
https://www.nocleansinging.com/2023/08/07/an-ncs-video-premiere-golgata-ur-eld-och-aska/
Satanath Records always presented “hidden in plain sight” gems of black metal. It wouldn’t be different with the Swedes of GOLGATA. Since the first full-length, Skam, the band has masterfully combined intense and raw black metal with atmospheric, poetic, and dark melodies. Now, GOLGATA returns with their third album, Ur eld och aska. An album made with varied narratives and sound layers that combine elements of doom metal, death, thrash, atmospheric black metal and hints of symphonic black metal. Lyrically the tracks explore life journeys and humankind’s diversity in seeking a better life.
Ur eld och aska (Through fire and ashes) is hypnotically captivating, a Swedish gem of unparalleled quality. Excellent album! I Highly recommend it!
https://blackmetalcult.com/2022/08/23/top-bm-albums-of-july-2022/