As someone always looking for the right balance of aggression and melody, one of the best trends in metal right now is the recent spate of black-trad hybrids. It’s a welcome revival of a combination with a long history that makes a ton of sense as their shared love of drama goes together like blood and ice. Ereb Altor know what I’m talking about as their most obvious artistic debt on Hälsingemörker is to Bathory. Now, that’s alright by me because Bathory is a good band to pay homage to, but it does put a stress on the songwriting to stand up to such an obvious influence.
Fortunately, Ereb Altor have been doing this for a long time and are more than equal to the challenge. Hälsingemörker is full of blackened trad riffs that manage to be morose and fist-pumping at the same time, from the tips of its horned helmet down to its fur boot encased toes. Most of the songs thud along at a mid-paced gallop with just enough of a groove in the drum work to make headbanging mandatory. I am more than happy to comply but am a hair fonder of the slower, more emotional songs like “The Waves, The Sky and The Pyre”, which definitely remind me that everybody in Ereb Altor is or was in doom metal band Isole too. When the two parts of Ereb Altor come together, as in closer “The Last Step”, it creates a truly epic and powerful sound with it’s thick, layered melodies that evoke a mood of defiance and tragedy.
Hälsingemörker shows a band that has taken someone else’s foundation and used it to make their own sound. Ereb Altor‘s sound is darker and grimmer than Bathory, with a slight lean to progressive song structures that make full use of the lengthy song structures. At first I thought I would tire of the seemingly simplistic anthemic nature of Hälsingemörker, but every listen only provided more detail. I look forward to seeing what else I unearth because Ereb Altor have made something full of fiery emotional intensity that’s catchy as a cold, and I’m not going to stop listening to it any time soon.
