California, home of beaches, blondes with super fake boobs, Hollywood and Black Metal..... Wait, what? Yeah, Black Metal, I was surprised too when I found out that the bone chilling Black/Death Metal sound of VALDUR hails from the sunny state of California, but you wouldn't know it by listening, not even close.

"At War With" is VALDUR's third full length, and it's a very surprising release, the album sounds as if it came from the depths of the icy Norwegian Forests, and rightfully so, the intro to this thing is a speech accompanied by some creepy melodies and sounds, but what the slow intro leads to is and unmistakable black metal barrage with the opening track "Conjuring the Fire Planes", which is a heavy and fast, yet standard piece of Black Metal with some Death overtones. A nice melodic guitar leads to "Death Winds Will Cleanse", again, a fun affair, but nothing I haven't heard before. The next song "Vast" is more interesting though, reminding me more of early Death / Doom than the Black Metal of the previous composition, not to worry though, the track is deeply rooted in Black Metal as well, the outro "Creation Part II" is a actually a gem on this record, starting out with an almost alarm clock ringing and the music slowly rising into a furious instrumental that slowly fades into the sinister sound of footsteps and malicious music playing in the background.

The production seems a bit flat, and the songwriting tends to stay on the safe side of the bands chosen genre, But to be perfectly honest with you, I very much enjoyed this album. It's still a very fun Black Metal affair (as much as black metal can be fun), The musicians work well, and despite the safer more standard approach, VALDUR crafted a good quality Black Metal record.