(written by Islander)
The Swedish band Hersir wear the trappings of ancient hellish menace and vicious savagery. They seem to have named themselves for Viking raiders. They titled their debut album Hateful Draugar From the Underground (in Norse mythology the draugar were reanimated corpses or the restless dead). And the album includes songs called “Holocaust Winter“, “Purification by Fire“, and “Valgaldr” (an Old Norse word for spells that raise the dead).
And have no doubt, there is indeed much about their formulations of black metal that are hellish and vicious, but their thematic inspirations from ancient Nordic spirituality and folklore also give their music an unearthly and epic aura, both frightening and wondrous. Perhaps most unexpected from the outward trappings mentioned above, this is a refined beast, a wicked creature in which a certain kind of dangerous elegance lurks beneath the black cloaks, the decayed skin, and the ravenous and hateful hungers.
So if you might be expecting “bestial black metal,” perish the thought. It thus makes sense that their label Darkness Shall Rise (which will release the album on March 28th) invokes the influence of classic Darkthrone, Enslaved, Emperor, or Isengard. And you’ll understand all of this better when you hear the song we’re premiering today — “Purification of Fire.”
Before we get to today’s song premiere, let’s first turn to the first advance song from the album, “Holocaust Winter“, whose title is like a big highway billboard sign for what’s coming. It arrived through a lyric video backed by dark forest scenes, telling tales of supernatural hellishness.
What comes is a livid and vividly trilling lead, piercing and relatively clean in tone, that quickly creates a dark and distressing mood. As battering drums, vicious snarls, and strangled screams arrive, the riffing seamlessly moves into swarming and swallowing sounds of cold, predatory menace.
And with maddened cries and more slowly thumping beats, the riffing shifts again, creating a feral harmony and a thrusting lustfulness, before sweeping and submerging the senses once more in a turbulent union of viciousness and fear, augmented by subtly shimmering keyboard accents that craft an aura of supernatural eeriness.
What stands out most of all in the song are those twin guitars, one more shrill and demented than the other, but both of them sizzling like sleet-storms and fire joined together. No murkiness here, only the brightness of things sharp and searing.
Now let’s turn to “Purification of Fire“, another title that stands as a signpost for what lies ahead. Once again, the guitars stand way out front, burning and maniacally writhing. Backed by blasting drums and viciously unhinged vocals, they waste no time creating an atmosphere of delirium and derangement on a vast scale.
But as in the album’s first single, Hersir make the song a dynamic one. The momentum becomes a march; sweeping synths and soaring chords create overlays of glory; the vocals find new ways of expressing madness through a shredding larynx.
Even at fever pitch and full speed, the maneuvers of the guitars and keys have an elegance to them, even a classical elegance, and a potent ability to convey feelings of despair and grief as well as unbridled savagery, as if to recognize that fire can be purifying, but not without pain.
Darkness Shall Rise will release Hateful Draugar From the Underground on CD, vinyl LP, and cassette tape formats. Find pre-orders via the links below.
HERSIR:
https://hersir.bandcamp.com
DARKNESS SHALL RISE:
https://www.darknessshallrise.de
https://www.facebook.com/darknessshallriseproductions
https://darknessshallriseproductions.bandcamp.com