Entry 1640 - Nahtrunar- Hrima

Style: black metal with folk influences

Thoughts: There are points when I'm writing about my collection where I feel like I made a mistake buying an album. As I'm listening I realize that whatever I heard in the album initially are simply not there anymore on repeated listens and I start to consider moving on from the record.  There are other times though when I am listening to an album and I feel like I hit the jackpot, where the album is way better than  I initially thought. Hrima is one such album.

Nahtrunar is a band that I have only found out about within the past two to three years. The cover of Wolfsstunde drew me in and the music solidified my love for the bands sound. I had high hopes for Hrima, and after listening a few times I can confidently say that the quality found on Wolfsstunde continues on in the follow up. 

Nahtrunar's sound is simple, yet incredibly effective. The basis is blisteringly fast black metal mixed with folk instrumentation. Every so often the black metal will fade into ambience, again intermixed with folk instrumentation. The production on Hrima is clear, yet not so polished that the soul of the music is taken out - just clear enough to make out all the instruments and nothing more. 

I'm not normally a fan of cleaner production in black metal - I prefer to struggle to listen to everything and pull out the best parts after doing a deep dive through the noise and ambience. Hrima does not take away from my enjoyment though with it's production. The music is easy to listen to, but there are often more than enough things going on to keep me coming back. This is especially true of the ambient sections. There are melodies, noises, and hidden secrets buried deep within their depths. 

All of this so far sounds nearly exactly like Wolfsstunde, but this is hardly part 2 of that album. Where Hrima differentiates itself is it's lengthy ambient and instrumental sections. In fact, there is not a single word spoken for nearly sixty to seventy percent of the album. 

These lengthy sections with no vocals are not only relaxing and introspective, they are potentially the best part of the album. The lengthy title track in particular calls to mind a cold winters night and looking up into the clear starry sky. It's a wonderful meditative experience that I found it easy to lose myself in. 

Hrima is not only a worthy follow up to Wolfsstunde, it's a completely different side of the band. The trademark integration of black metal with the folk elements is there, but the focus on the ambient moments is really what makes this album stand on its own. Both albums are excellent in their own rights but I feel that Hrima may be the slightly better one of the two. Not only do we get the black metal in the first half, we get a full ambient experience in the second. It's almost two albums in one.

Entry 1639 - Void of Silence - Human Antithesis

Style: blackened doom metal

Thoughts: Void of Silence. A band that I got into right when this album released years ago. I was recently turned into a fan of Primordial and found these guys as a "side project" of AA Nemtheanga. I enjoyed his rough and emotive voice in Primordial so I wanted some more; hence Void of Silence.

Initial curiosity aside, I would not have looked further into this band if the music was sub-par. While the first two albums from the band are not exactly to my tastes, the third - Human Antithesis is quite good. It features six songs ranging from a minute long to well over twenty minutes. 

The shorter tracks are small interludes between the real meat of the album. There are four main songs on here and they are the type of music that feels more like a musical novel than they do an outright song. They have an introduction, rising action, a huge climax, and then falling action - the typical tropes of a novel. 

Lets look at the title track as a prime example of this. The song (and album) start out with a near dark ambient section with someone speaking in Italian with some industrial backing noises. Slowly keyboards come in before the rest of the band. A slow dirge-like speed is adopted by the album as more and more layers are piled on top. Keyboards, guitars, vocals - they all come in layers. 

Eventually the song takes on its final structure and the main riff is formed from the ether. From here the song twists and turns through spoken word, dark ambient, black metal, funeral doom, and everything in between before finally coming to its dramatic conclusion around the 18 minute mark. The story told is that of humanity relying on the divine for guidance when in reality we need no such guidance ourselves. It's a musical novel. It's a thesis. It's fantastic.

This is how the album is formed. Four musical journeys and two small interludes. It's a series of small musical novels that beg me to finish the album every time I put it on.  Alas t his is the only album with Nemtheanga on it, and for a long time I thought this would be the final album from the band. Fortunately it was not, and even though Mr. Alan is no longer in the band, I still enjoy the music they put out past his involvement. 

I find albums like this to be hit or miss. The danger with writing long songs is that they have to justify that time - the must respect the listener in order to be engaging. With each of the songs on Human Antithesis the band has realized this and written songs that not only are good to listen to in isolation, but also as a whole album.