Here we have a somewhat mysterious band SVARTULVEN from Attica, Athens in Greece. I searched high and low across the internet and apparently the band members' identities are completely unknown. It was mixed by Nikos Trialonis at Goblins Layer Studios (Greece), mastered by V Santura at Woodshed Studio (Germany), and the cover art was created by Adrien Baxter. Might I just say first that the mix and production are excellent, and the artwork is fantastic; in lieu of talking about the band for once I enjoyed talking about the people behind the scenes mixing, mastering and making album art because those people are just as important in the process as the band themselves.

Getting into the music, this is black metal. No frills, no extra genre tags, just straight Black Metal that's waiting to grind your soul. In some ways they remind me of MGLA, but maybe a tad less complex. I saw someone describe this as "orthodox" Black Metal and honestly that fits really well. These guys want to sound like the ur example of traditional black metal in the 21st century and that's exactly what they sound like to my ears. Now my tastes in Black Metal lie more in the atmospheric black metal direction, but I can certainly appreciate more straight forward Black Metal like this, even if it's not necessarily my cup of tea. I think what I find myself thinking the most about this album is that it's solid, it doesn't really push any boundaries or try anything I haven't heard in the genre before, but it's brilliantly executed and like I said the production is fantastic. The vocals are fine, but nothing remarkable, the riffs are rich and crunchy, but almost in a banal way. I guess despite the eminent quality on display here I can't help but think "I've heard all of this before". None of the songs particularly stuck out to me above the others, the whole album just kind of melts together for me, but I still very much enjoyed the listening.

The bottom line is, this album will appeal to black metal purists, people who long for the days when black metal was just a bunch of guys in silly costumes running around a forest in Europe with corpse paint, holding torches and swinging their hair around, that is the vision this album evokes for me. The atmosphere has that classic cold, distant tinge to it and even though the production is immaculate, it doesn't lose that rough rugged feel that this style of music should have. I've heard it said ironically and unironically that "it's not trve black metal unless it sounds like it was recorded in the shittiest conditions possible, on the worst equipment" and I hope that that mentality goes away completely. With modern recording tech we can get that hollow sound without having to actively make the music difficult to listen to. For myself I think I'm discovering that old school Black Metal just isn't my bag anymore, I'm more into the symphonic or progressive black metal now, but regardless this is a good album and one that should not be missed by fans of classic Black Metal.

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