ALBUM REVIEW: Martröð – Draumsýnir Eldsins

Icelandic black metallers Martröð deliver their debut album of volcanic and twisted hallucinations. “Draumsýnir Eldsins” is set for release via Debemur Morti Productions on December 12th.

Bursts of fiery guitars spasm into life atop crazed drumming and evocatively demented vocals. Dissonance and lava consume all with feral and untamed black metal volatility, wasting no time. The deathly churning rhythms and harrowing leads scythe the soul with a scathing onslaught of disquieting musical malice. Jack Blackburn’s unfaltering drum work punctuated the lunacies of HV and AP whose names are both very familiar as a hallmark of quality in the black metal underground. Performing with a distinctive wildness; the instrumental work is majestically dark while the despairing and eerie vocals send chills down the spine. Hearing the entire drum kit and fret board used rather than repeating a few notes gives the entirety of the lineup a huge amount of room to play off of each other. The end result is a chaotic, claustrophobic and yet expansive and unpredictable listen. The early moments of this record set the bar very high for what promises to be a restless and nightmarish experience…

Balancing the tempests of guitars which descend into maddening outbursts of feverish ecstasy with incredibly versatile drum work and bass parts that actually complement the guitar rather than just underline it. This instrumental foundation is unbreakable. Equally the vocals sit so gloriously amidst the mix so as to weave spells of luminescent poisoned sorcery within your very ears. There is no denying the sheer adrenaline of this record, the huge changes in tempo and timbre that seem to accelerate into oblivion before dropping into some charnel abyss without warning. You will certainly find your heart racing and your breath held while the hellish cinematic vision of this hallucinatory opus unfurl before you. Whether the blackened flames blister your charred flesh or the band simply strip it back to a sepulchral rocking groove, every moment feels valuable and bewitching. There is plenty of texture in the vocals and the addition of cello and bowed guitars alongside haunting piano – ensuring the true magnitude of the horrors at hand can be felt without wasting a single frequency.

From the convulsive discordance to transcendental spectral atmospherics, Martröð has a world of horrifying and twisted contortions of black metal for you to experience. These four songs total under forty minutes in running time and yet such an expansive and full range of emotions and sounds can be felt and heard. Any longer might have lost impact, so this being to-the-point is something I am grateful for. Only the best ideas made the cut, and there is no arguing the ideas showcased for us here are simply sublime. This is auditory psychotropics that invoke the demons of your dreams and force-feed visions of cataclysmic blazes into your minds eye. Ending on the thrashy, feral and explosive note that this album does, you simply want to play it again and again. Martröð act as a perfect example as to how black metal can break its boundaries and push forward whilst retaining the essence of everything it must always be; dangerous, cathartic, frightening and still metal to the bone. Even the bleaker or more avant-garde moments are so riffy and crushing in intensity that they never have that pretentious air that some modern bands befoul their art with. No, this is something far more timeless and well thought out.

A supreme offering of black metal, once again proving Iceland to have some of the strongest examples in the contemporary underground. I had no doubts this would be a magnificent opus just based on the musicians involved, but it excelled my expectations and transported me to somewhere unique as it infected my conscious. While the dissonant wildness and twisted atmospherics are extremely visceral, there is also a sense of melody, class and straightforward metallic sensibilities to be found on this record. For me, that is the middle ground that made bands like Svartidauði so perfect. Martröð has unleashed a spectral collection of masterfully executed black metal songs that form one terrifying grander vision. Prepare for the ritualistic slumber and nightmarish visions to present themselves to you…