The time has again arrived for us to check in with Nordland, the one-man black metal band from the damp east coast of England, whose distinctive musical contemplations of a pagan past and looming death have gripped our attention in past releases, the last of which was the excellent European Paganism album in 2017. Not one whose creative inspirations go dormant for long at a time (or maybe ever), Nordland’s creator Vorh has recorded a new album named The Dead Stones which will be released on October 24th by the Russian labels Satanath Records and More Hate Productions.
I wrote of the music on the last album that Nordland had “succeeded in maintaining connections to some of black metal’s most revered (and most copied) traditions, while also embellishing and changing the methods of expression in ways that stand out from the pack”, creating music that was “so complex, so intricate, and so kaleidoscopic in its changes that it also merits adjectives like ‘progressive’ and ‘avant garde'”. Nordland’s propensity for crafting ever-changing musical expressions that take listeners outside of themselves into a different imagined world is on display again in the song from The Dead Stones that we’re premiering today — “The Roots Impale the Dead“. Continue reading »
