EP REVIEW: The Eternal Fanfare – Hulder
Sometimes it is necessary to remind yourself that Washington DC-based solo project and hardest working woman in black metal HULDER has only been on the scene for four years. In that time she has built a fearsome reputation, knocked out 11 (!) releases including last year’s phenomenal Godlastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry, and most recently signed to 20 Buck Spin. Presumably to keep the irons of interest red-hot, she has released an EP by the name of The Eternal Fanfare, as a stopgap to the inevitable next full length. But how will it compare? Will it hold up to her tremendous track record or will the magic have dissipated?
Instrumental openings are something of a hallmark of the black metal genre. Sometimes evocative, mostly drenched in melodramatic cheese, it’s really quite rare that you find one of any kind of quality. Curse From Beyond is one of them, taking us straight into the forest with noises of crackling fires and suitably chilling atmosphere. The track is then thoroughly elevated by the alarmingly tasteful inclusion of gentle synth lines and hauntingly gorgeous, almost choral vocal lines. It calls to mind the best works of DEAD CAN DANCE and, if nothing else, will make you overwhelmingly grateful for the return of this evocative project we know as HULDER.
Burden Of Flesh And Bone shows off a newer, slicker production job, albeit one that still sits right at the sweet-spot of the intersection of raw, ice-rimed nastiness and, you know, actually produced. To complement this, HULDER has fired some wonderful segments through its lens. It starts off in a triumphant march before introducing a fierce blast beat, which is then bolstered with powerful and dramatic keyboard lines. The back half is where the track really comes into its own however, as in its final moments the metallic segment falls away, allowing what sounds like a devilish approximation of a church organ to shine through in a bone-chillingly morose interlude before a tsunami of harsh riffing, blast beats and even a searing guitar solo smashes into you and whisks you back into the maelstrom.
Keeping the pedal firmly pressed to the metal, Sylvan Awakening is a bile-tinged slick of vile, blackened vitriol from beginning to end. If there’s one thing that can be said about her, it’s that HULDER definitely knows how to write a riff; they’re positively oozing from both this and its successor, title track The Eternal Fanfare. The opening segment is utterly drenched in searing hatred, something which is woven throughout the rest of the track’s faster segments. These are knotted expertly around what can only be described as early doors URFAUST riffs, only written by someone who wasn’t absolutely out of their skull on cheap, paint-thinner gin at the time, leaving them feeling absolutely razor sharp.
A Perilous Journey shows what could almost be described as restraint compared to the ferocious middle segment of the EP. Here we find floating, effervescent melody drifting across a mesh of crunching riffs and thunderously powerful drum work. It works almost like a bookend to the dryad’s dream of its opening counterpart, as here we find a satyr’s nightmare, just as druidic and haunting but darker, harsher and much more threatening. It makes for a wonderfully evocative closer and leaves the listener thoroughly tantalised and desperate to hear what comes next. Roll on that inevitable next full-length; after this EP the wait is going to be utterly ludicrous, even in the unlikely event of it coming out in a matter of weeks…
Rating: 8/10
The Eternal Fanfare is out now via 20 Buck Spin.
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