It’s safe to say Hulder exploded in popularity since signing to 20 Buck Spin in 2022 for their EP release, The Eternal Fanfare. Their debut album, released in 2021, Godslastering: Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry, didn’t leave a huge desire for me to revisit. As for this newest Verses in Oath, on the other hand, I find myself more annoyed and confused than anything else. Yes, this is a black metal album, and yes, it’s a fairly standard corpsepaint-tier variety album, but where it works, it does work. It just takes a while to get there. Opening with an intro that definitely could have been trimmed, “An Elegy” is 1:40 of crows cawing and ambient wind noises. It goes without saying that it’s an offender of the dreaded “Metal Intro Syndrome”: where bands put unnecessarily long intros/outros on albums to pad for time/atmosphere. The first proper track though, “Boughs Ablaze”, doesn’t do a good job of setting the pace either, as it’s well and truly a slog to get through. The first three non-intro tracks in total all wear out their welcomes long before they end, and contain more bloat than the rest of the tracks on the album. In particular “Hearken the End” does not do enough to justify its length and comes off as just another way to fill out an album.
Hulder then proceeds to make one of the most bizarre stylistic choices I’ve seen and put one interlude next to another. “Lamentation” into “An Offering” is the textbook definition of a pace-killer, and is the most offensive point on the album. On the flip side, though, the album really starts to open up on “Cast into the Well of Remembrance”, with its sound similar to cult Norwegian band Aeternus, and, suddenly, I found myself more interested in Verses in Oath. Each track from here onwards is great. The songs don’t overstay their welcome, and I am convinced that there’s a great EP hidden in this album. The production throughout is another high point in the album’s favor, giving each song breathing room and attaining a triumphant soundscape. Verses in Oath would be a lot better if tracks one through five were omitted entirely, instead leaving “An Offering” as the intro (as it’s a chant-choral interlude rather than just the sounds of crows and wind) and the proper tracks afterwards. Albums like this are incredibly frustrating to listen to and review because waiting for six songs before the good part happens does not hit me as good songwriting. I hope Hulder can produce something better next time. This one just ain’t it.
