AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VORTEX OF END — “ARDENS FVROR”

 

On May 31st — tomorrow — Osmose Productions will release Ardens Fvror, the third album by the French extremists Vortex of End, and on the eve of that explosive advent we present a full stream of the album.

Ardens Fvror is a hybrid in more ways than one. Stylistically, the band have created an alchemical alloy of black and death metal that interweaves the thunderous tumult and megaton destructiveness of a modern war zone with the hallucinatory quality of of an occult ritual, in which solemn reverence and fierce zealotry are also intermingled. The result is music that’s both skull-crushing and spell-weaving.

 

 

The album has been produced in a way that gives it a heavy, powerful sound, with massive low-end weight, but without the ultra-distorted muddiness that often characterizes blackened death metal. The music’s clarity, however, in no way detracts from the nearly overpowering force of its impact.

When the band are in full-on assault mode, the drums blast like high-caliber automatic weaponry and detonate like bombs, accompanied by dense waves of cruel riffing, the guitars whirring like giant bone saws cutting through ranks of stacked corpses or writhing like the movements of leviathan serpents, and by leads that boil in tortured frenzies.

While these full-throttle assaults are stunningly ferocious, there is an air of terrible grandeur about the music as well, with the band’s chaotic melees segmented by chords that ring out like blasts of massed trumpets and by changing cadences that slow into stately marches.

That atmosphere of frightening fervor and ominous solemnity also bleeds over into other aspects of the music alluded to above, in which the violence falls away, to be replaced by shamanistic interludes, in which choral voices and strident proclamations rise up from spectral ambient waves and titanic bass tones.

The dynamic quality of these sensations extends to the vocals, which are a cornucopia of extravagant (and spine-shivering) expressions, a changing array of wild cries and vitriolic yells, of heartless roars and agonized howls, of deep intonations and soaring wails.

 

 

The music has little warmth in it (though a great deal of fire). It is much more likely to strike fear into the heart than to offer any form of consolation or comfort. It sounds more like the zealous invocation of terrible dark powers, and the expression of their stunning fury. And in all of its aspects, the album is as electrifying as it is fearsome.

We hope you enjoy the full stream of the album below. Look for its release tomorrow. You can place orders for it now:

PRE-ORDER:
http://osmoseproductions-label.com/vortex-of-end-ardens-fvror/

VORTEX OF END:
https://www.facebook.com/vortexofend