ALBUM REVIEW: Krahnholm – Granting Death

Here is my review of the brand new album from Russian Atmospheric Black Metal band KRAHNHOLM.

1. Abyss Inside kicks straight into Nargaroth like atmospherics with bleak sounding guitars, crashing drums and a real cold vibe to it. The waves of Black Metal really hit you with its static glow and beautifully written riffs. The vocals soar over the instrumentation with a melancholic yet aggressive howl. A very promising opening piece for sure.
2. A Whirlwind Of A Thousand Blades continues the atmosphere in a more chaotic style. The attacking drums, bass and guitar are really well mixed in a raw but clear manner, the addition of more howled vocals, which are very reminiscent of 90s Norwegian Black Metal sound gorgeous. The bass sounds very haunting and the guitar creates walls of sound, the drums in no way become boring or repetitive while the vocals are simply astounding.
3. Granting Death opens with yet more cascading riffs and an extremely sombre feeling to it. The songwriting is absolutely excellent and the cold dark atmosphere is captured beautifully. This band succeed so well in creating a really bleak and elegant style of raw atmospherics that really appeals to me. The more screeched vocals towards the end are almost bordering on DSBM and add a really interesting depressive touch, very good stuff.
4. Ravens Feather, Wolfs Fang is a lovely clean piece of depressive sounding guitar work, it breaks up the album really nicely and allows for the momentum to be lost slightly to keep everything sounding fresh. A pleasant piece of interval music.
5. Scorching Storm brings us straight back into demonically bleak Black Metal. A very welcome return I must say. The soundscapes created are really haunting and the vocals work more like an additional instrument over the catatonically hypnotising instrumentation. The music itself is somewhat repetitive but not in the way that becomes boring and stagnant, but more in a way that builds up a comforting sense of confidence in the bands strong songwriting and ability to create a great atmosphere of cold and haunting sounds.
6. The Feast Of Decayed Souls starts with more bleak riffs and killer songwriting. The sheerly dark and melancholic feel of this song is executed perfectly. Being the last track of the album it has a responsibility to give the release closure and does so beautifully. It is probably my favourite track of the release as the riffs seem both more sorrowful and also more aggressive somehow, which creates a really interesting feeling to the song. Once again, excellent work on this piece, beautifully done.

This album gives us 6 tracks of uniquely cold sounding, atmospheric Black Metal. A definitely worthwhile listen if you enjoy bands like Nargaroth, Winterfylleth and Coldworld. The combination of its raw production and excellent songwriting is done gloriously. -8/10