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“Deep out of the forests of Lower Saxony, where once the Görde murderer was up to mischief, Svartgrav was created on an icy winter night.”

 

And so begins an introduction by four labels who will jointly release Svartgrav‘s debut album I on October 27th.

 

They also disclose that the band is the solo project of Thorkraft, who has also gained some attention through his atmospheric black metal project Sieghetnar, and they further characterize the music as “the icy, Nordic coldness of Immortal with the epic and sublime symphonies of Emperor and Troll, and stone-shattering vocals in the style of Obtained Enslavement“.

 

We have our own introduction to the album today, as we premiere the new record’s substantial opening track, also named “I“, because all the songs are only denominated by Roman numerals.

 

With only a manic drum attack as prelude, the song you’re about to hear quickly blazes, and becomes mystical. The drums hurtle in a frenzy, shrill guitars scream, and the vocals discharge ugly tirades of caustic shrieking fury. But perhaps the most notable sound is the high wail of synths, which lend the experience an atmosphere of eerie and haunting splendor.

 

Those vast stratospheric waves of sound seem like an aural aurora borealis, wondrous and wafting, but the music also sounds wrenching, like the kind of hopelessness that provokes despair, or perhaps like the pain of wraiths that have become lost.

 

As the drumming ebbs and flows, moving from stately beats to blasting frenzies and back again, with deep bubbling undulations heard further below, the music itself sounds like the ethereal cries of tortured ghosts, saturating the senses with glistening tones of mystery and pain.

 

Only near the end does the percussion vanish and the intensity subside, making way for ambient music that seems like the chilling wonders of star-shine in a very cold, hostile, and bewildering place.

 

Svartgrav‘s debut album will be jointly released by GrimmDistribution, Australis Records, The End Of Time Records, and Fetzner Death Records, on CD and digital formats. More info about how to acquire it is available through the links below. And below the links you’ll also have the opportunity to listen to the album’s previously released second track.

 

https://www.nocleansinging.com/2023/10/10/an-ncs-premiere-svartgrav-i/