Summoning the Ancient Power of the Runes

Black metal is a genre well-suited to solo projects and home production, which is just as well, as the misfits and misanthropes attracted to the style are often not at their best playing with others – just look what happened in Norway…

This self-released demo from Adalruna, the solo project of Chesterfield-based musician Wulfhelm, features two lengthy tracks of atmospheric black metal. ‘Summoning The Ancient Power Of The Runes’ opens with a Graveland-style keyboard intro before unleashing the guitar, drums and tortured vocals over a background of foreboding orchestral chords and war-cries. Whilst generating savage intensity, the track never loses its melodic bearings, weaving in and out of strident battle metal and culminating in a crashing of waves. ‘Strength Through Purity’ leads off with distorted guitar chords, gradually adding bass and keyboards for a slow burning intro. Drums come in after around three minutes, but there are still no vocals until around the five-minute mark. After that, the track develops into a mid-paced, melodic black metal odyssey, with quiet keyboard and clean guitar passages punctuated with roaring, raw black metal sections. There’s even time for a guitar solo! The overall effect is similar to Wyrd, Temnojar or early Bergthron. By black metal standards, the production is fairly clean and civilised.

I’m not sure the piano melody was such a good idea, and generally I prefer my black metal to sound a bit harsher than this, but it’s heartening to find this kind of music coming out of the English shires, instead of from Scandinavia. Hey, we had runes and heathen gods here too, you know!

This review was originally written for Judas Kiss webzine:
www.judaskissmagazine.co.uk