Posts Tagged ‘Hellbound’

Album of the day: Seidr – For Winter Fire

Posted on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Lovingly pinched from Hellbound: From seemingly out of nowhere, Louisville’s Seidr, formed in 2009, have raised the doom bar high with their debut full-length for Flenser. Allying throbbing, sub-zero sludge / doom riffs with poignant post-metal passages, beared up with throatgurge-ing vocals whose epic lyrics illustrate frozen paths of Nordic glory, For Winter Fire is a sprawling work, demanding the listener’s respect. Listening to this epic bit of Viking doooom is hardly a light undertaking, either – the majority of the songs push past the nine-minute mark.

The album opens with ‘A Vision from Hlidskjalf’. Low gemshorns raise the call to hunt amid pregnant post-rock moodiness, heavy with an expectancy of pummeling riffs to come. The swooping hammer blow finally comes swinging down about two-and-a-half minutes in, heavy enough to crack the surrounding ice. Immediately, my mind’s eye evokes blinding-white Hothen landscapes, breath freezing to particles of frost in front of me, eyes squinted against the unforgiving glare of the snowbound sun.

Oh yes – Seidr have effortlessly managed to craft mood music that evokes the onset of a cripplingly-cold Norse winter. The song’s showstopping coda, with its hoar-throated hail to allfather Odin snarled over space-oddity guitar ties the eleven-minute track up in a neat bow. The added-delay production of the drums is of particular note, and it gives the lumbering percussion a particularly gargantuan feel across the album.

‘On the Shoulders of the Gods’ follows, its intro a din of roaring feedback and vague, haunting samples of hammer versus anvil, until the drums kick the song into a gurgling crawl. Through most of its twelve-minute run, the track underplays the crushing guitar riffs in favor of more of that planet-hurling space guitar, juxtaposed against double-tracked vocals, a different guttural growl in each ear.

Continue reading: Seidr – For Winter Fire | Hellbound.ca.

Tags: Album of the day, Flenser Records, For Winter Fire, Hellbound, Post Metal, post rock, Seidr
Posted in 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended | 2 Comments »

Album of the day: Boris – Heavy Rocks / Attention Please

Posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

Lovingly pinched from Hellbound.ca: Boris is always at its best and most exciting the more adventurous they get, and the two new records, Heavy Rocks and Attention Please, are just that, as both see drummer Atsuo, guitarist Wata, and bassist Takeshi embrace their accessible side in ways nobody, especially those ...read more