Eldrig – Urlagarne

Shame, shame, shame on me. This album was already released in late 2012 and I completely missed it, despite the fact that I loved its predecessor ‘Mysterion’. Although, predecessor… there’s actually quite a story to it.

On Eldrig’s own blogspot, he explains that ‘Urlagarne’ was already composed and recorded in 2008. He suddenly felt the urge to record an album, something similar had happened in 2006 with the recording of debut album ‘Kali’. Apparently the album ended up on a shelf, but finally was released by Darker than Black records, as a digipack limited to 500. Eldrig (of Fanisk fame) has opted for rather the same framework as ‘Kali’ had: three long, intense songs followed by short interludes.

The album is fully instrumental and its concept is fate, or destiny. Consisting of three parts, named after the three most important norse Norns, Urd (Urğr), Verthandi (Verğandi) and Skuld, female beings that rule the destiny of men. ‘Urd I’ opens with a rage and you can hear that, despite the fact that there are no vocals, Eldrig is trying to tell a story with his music, more by impressions made by the atmosphere of the music. It has an undeniable heroic feel to it. The fast hypnotic Black Metal riffs take you along for a ride along a starry sky, to show you the world at the zenith with the icy beauty of melancholic twin guitar leads. The interlude ‘Urd II’ reminds me of Bathory’s ‘Hammerheart. ‘Verthandi I’ has a slightly more heavy metal feel to it, the melody lines remind you of someone coming at peace with his destiny. ‘Verthandi II’ is in the same vein as ‘Urd II’. ‘Skuld I’ is both the most aggressive and the most epic song of the album. The tremolo picked guitars, the thunderous drums, the unearthly, slightly dissonant leads in the middle. Yes. Very nice.

I can imagine people will have problems with the fact that this album is fully instrumental, and there will probably also be people who ignore this album due to the rightwing ideologies of mr. Eldrig. However, the qualities of the music and of his abilities as a composer are obvious, and people into melodic, well structured yet non-standard Black Metal should give this a go.