HARMDAUD - Skarvor
Art Gates Records
This is the second full length by HARMDAUD which is a one man black metal project out of Sweden. The one man is multi instrumentalist / vocalist Andreas Stenlund. Now when I was researching, reading the promo info and listening I saw that this guy is friends with Vintersorg aka: Andreas Hedlund. In fact Hedlund produced this album as well as the last one, Blinda dodens barn, from 2017.
Now with that said, yeah there are some parallels between this and Hedlund’s eponymous band. Fortunately it's the good stuff. First off there's plenty of thrashing folk metal melodies that jump out at you with ferocity. The lyrics are sung in Swedish which carries the ethnic feel. There's a splattering of effects, moderate keyboard use and an all around feeling of epicness in the song structures. Vocals bounce around from harsh screams, clean vocals, death metal baritones and even some spoken word parts.
Of course atmospheric black metal is the template as far as the basic sound goes with other elements be they thrash, folk and melodic death metal attached. If the desired effect was to transport the listener to another realm or time period then it works. Now as much as the music is sweeping and compelling it must be put forth that the artist is not a mere musician. I said this years ago and it bares repeating. The whole one man multi-instrumentalist black metal thing has gone two fold. Yes we still have the guy in a room with a laptop creating something. On the other hand we have full on composers like Andreas Stenlund who give us music that equals classical music of the past.
http://www.artgatesrecords.com/
https://harmdaud.bandcamp.com/releases
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