ALBUM REVIEW: Vargtimman – Ereb Altor

Swedish Viking metallers EREB ALTOR return this week with their ninth full-length studio album Vargtimman, which promises to lead the pack in terms of “Powerful Epic Pagan Metal”. Listing their influences as the likes of BATHORY, GRAND MAGUS and WARDRUNA, expectations are high coming into this one, and the band’s prolific release rate (this is their fifth album in just the past seven years) has already shown what they’re made of.

Getting started with a choral line that’s not a million miles off the classic Halo theme tune is a big green tick in this writer’s book, and the soaring clean vocals that follow are great signs of promise. Most notably of all though is that this album opener I Have The Sky is a proper song. As daft as that sounds, this is a catchy, cathartic singalong number that comes as something of a surprise given the subgenres EREB ALTOR are exploring.

Lead single and title track Vargtimman follows in much more standard fare for the genre; a snarling, creeping beast of a song that sees the whole band switch to a far more primal version of themselves than we have just heard. Guttural roars, crashing cymbals and vicious riffs are the key components here, but a whispered, repeated chant in the middle of the track is delivered over gently plucked guitar and bass, and provides a true spine-tingler of a moment

From here on out, the album falls into a distinct pattern. Each odd numbered track is a soaring, epic number, and each even numbered track turns the aggression up to maximum and rips you a new one. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, and in fact for the most part it’s done to a high standard, but it’s an interesting and somewhat distracting aside once you notice it.

There are moments throughout this record that are simply killer: the rallying cries in the second half of Ner I Mörkret are stirring and powerful; the vocal undercurrent of Alvablot carries the song effortlessly; and the building and stripping away of volume, intensity and instrumentation on Fenris makes for a gorgeously textured listen. But that’s all we really get – moments or solitary components that strike a chord. As important as they are, singular moments do not make for a memorable album.

Much of the middle of the record fades into obscurity, particularly Rise Of The Destroyer and Den Dighra Döden, and album closer Heimdals Horn is littered with odd production choices, from misplaced surges of strings, to the final moments which come across as more of a whimper than a fearsome battle cry. As it meanders onward to its conclusion, there’s a real sense that EREB ALTOR just weren’t sure on how to end the record.

All told, Vargtimman is not a bad album. Far from it in fact. But there is just that something extra missing to really elevate this release. Coming so early in the year, this may be one consigned to the annals of 2022 before it even really claws its way out of the gate.

Rating: 6/10

Vargtimman is out now via Hammerheart Records.

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