Ereb Altor are back after three years since their last full-length. The band name reflects their music as is taken from an expansion of the Swedish fantasy role-playing game “Drakar och Demoner”.
I was into Epic, Folk and Viking Metal during my adolescence, when I travelled with a bandmate from Pisa to Milan to attend the Korpiklaani and Alestorm concert. We had a bag full of cheap beers and we took a six-hour regional train that didn’t lower our expectations. Growing up, my musical taste has changed and the love for this epic sound remained underground. Nowadays I don’t listen so much to this kind of music, but when I find something interesting my old love resurfaces again.
To be honest, I needed a second listen to Hälsingemörker to appreciate it. Maybe just because I was listening to it at work while people around me were talking and the attention was pushed away. On the second listen, the parts that I thought were out of place were in the right place and they provided what I thought was missing to this record.
Hälsingemörker was published on February 7 and is the tenth album by the Swedish Viking Metal band. We can translate the name of the album to “Hälsinge Darkness”, as Hälsingland is the Swedish region from were the band comes from, a place full of history and home of the Norse mythology; you know the movie Midsommar by Ari Aster? Well, the movie is settled in Hälsingland. If you haven’t seen it yet I suggest you catch up on it, but in the meantime let’s start entering those places by listening to Hälsingemörker.
“Valkyrian Fate” is the first track of the album, and is a classic example of a Viking Metal song: clean but powerful voices, heavy riffs and epic synths that invite you on a travel through Norse mythology; the battle has begun and the Valkyries fly by our side. The title track “Hälsingemörker” takes us into a mystical forest, were silence reigns and some night creatures follow us. The song talks about an entity taken from the Swedish folklore: the lady of the forest is the subject of this song and also of the cover art of the album made by Christine Lind. We can find an even darker and a slightly more Black Metal atmosphere in “Ättestupan”. In fact the word “Ättestupan” is used to define a number of precipices in Sweden where it is supposed that senicide ritual took place during ancient Norse time. The songs tells us the story of older people thinking about the end of their life, falling from the cliffs. Additionally, “Vi är Mörkret” continues to follow a Black Metal style; furious guitars and drums, epic dark synths and a clean voice tell us a story about evil and darkness; in fact, in English the track is translated to “We are the darkness”. Here comes “Träldom”, my favourite song from the album. Translated to “slavery”, and the lyrics of the song tells a story between darkness and light, with each side chaining the other in a battle were those whom we think to be the oppressors are actually the oppressed. The Black Metal side of this album comes out in this track with all the musician move into the same direction with a continuous and furious sound, while the atmospheres of the synths and the voices are expanding to create a mystical soundscape. With “The waves, the sky and the pyre” one discovers a pure Viking Metal ode to the sea. Now the music is slower, more melodic and epic. The warrior is on his final journey on his pyre retracing all his adventure and battles encountered; he talks about his death that has put an end to his life, while the waves that accompanied him are continuing to crash onto the cliffs. The “Last Step” is in fact the last song of the record. And how to conclude a Viking saga, if not with a battle and the gates of Valhalla? A more epic song that tells the moments of the battle when the Viking warriors are not afraid to die, because they knows that if they die in battle the Gates of Valhalla will open up for them.
Hälsingemörker is an album that has its roots in Northern folklore, and every song reminds us of that. Ereb Altor have managed to convey the spirit and atmosphere of Norse culture and of the Hälsingland region, paying homage to its rich cultural and landscape tradition.
