ALBUM REVIEW: Verses In Oath – Hulder
Imagine if Oppenheimer and the avengers of astrophysicists had gotten it wrong; the atomic bomb had set the Earth’s atmosphere ablaze, and the world as we know it suddenly ceased to exist. Now, press play on Verses In Oath, HULDER’s second album, to experience that doomsday scenario’s soundtrack in real-time. Whereas 2021’s Godslastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry pillaged villages of their history with its pulverising brand of second-wave black metal, Verses In Oath deftly balances holding a torch to black metal’s primal past whilst carving out a path for its future in a scene that all too often clings to its legacy acts for better or worse.
Cast Into The Well Of Remembrance is itself the perfect primer for Verses In Oath – an aural assault on the senses which is uncompromisingly claustrophobic and desensitising as blast beats ricochet like asteroids crashing into earth, sparse synths soaked in grandeur shine out sporadically, and melodic riffs rip through your flesh. If Godslastering was to HULDER what In The Nightside Eclipse was to EMPEROR, then Verses In Oath is their Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk. The maturity in HULDER’s songwriting shines through, as songs like Hearken The End show an appreciation for letting individual pieces of the puzzle coexist.
If Boughs Ablaze was the blackhole engulfing our universe, Hearken The End is your entrance to the afterlife; ritualistic choirs chime out underneath a cacophony of dissonance, before majestic synths and cranium-cracking blast beats drown your senses and riffs rip open the heaven like locusts descending. Better yet, it’s a seven-minute epic that feels like four, never once overstaying its welcome on repeated listens.
Verses In Oath masters suspense, playing on the paranoia the dark arts of dissonant black metal do so well, through its understanding of time and space. Hearken The End and the title track obliterate your senses, before giving way to two back-to-back interludes. Lamentation’s operatic vocals and radio static evoke a 1940s wartime broadcast, whilst An Offering’s clanging bells quietly echo underneath a murky mix of atmospheric strings and synths, shamanic vocals, and tribal drumming – the soundtrack to your very own sacrificial slaughter. Whilst Cast Into The Well Of Remembrance decimates this calm before the storm in seconds, these mid-album moments go beyond black metal’s initial scope, breathing life into a world beyond its means.
Vessel Of Suffering suggests that music so frantically frenetic, so primal and raw, can at once be poetic, meaningful, and grandiose in stature. As HULDER grotesquely growls “Unchained savagery is a testament of mockery / An aristocracy enshrouded in lies, veiled in the guise of maternity / Rise – a call to the forlorn souls, tortured and broken / For soon shall come a day of reckoning”, you can’t help but search for some sense of meaning, your own interpretation of this mystical rite unfolding in your mind. In just 40 minutes, Verses In Oath announces HULDER’s ascendance to black metal’s throne. Hail your leader folks, the future is now.
Rating: 9/10
Verses In Oath is set for release on February 9th via 20 Buck Spin.
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