Since I do not see the point to write an extensive introduction about this cult-band, I just leave you with this: formed almost 2 ½ decades ago, hailing from the city of Bergen (Norway), and creators of some excellent, as well as some disappointing releases before. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you know them, or at least you’ve heard about them.
Well, now, after quite some time, they come back with a new album, raunijaR, and it’s like some celebration-album, at least for the label (Helheim are no strangers!), because it’s the 100th official release on Dark Essence Records / Karisma. Congratulations from undersigned!
This eighth full length album by (original members) V’gandr (bass, vocals), H’grimnir (vocals, rhythm guitars), Hrymr (drums), and (newer member) Reichborn (lead and rhythm guitars), lasts for over forty minutes (five tracks). With opening track Helheim 9, everything starts the Viking / Folk way, being based on harmonic chants (multiple-voiced), acoustic guitars, mouth harp, tribal percussion and violin (I guess). Slowly it evolves into dimensions much harsher, with faster acoustic guitar melodies and blackened voices, and step by step the piece grows unto quasi-heroic proportions. Quite a cool introduction it is, Helheim 9, but it isn’t but the start of another epos within this Norwegian band’s impressive history. As from raunijaR, Helheim show their (sharpened) teeth (those longing for bloody bites), with an epic perspective on Viking / Pagan-oriented Black Metal. Of course it’s based on Nordic melodies, but quite cool are the brass-like keyboard orchestrations, besides the known yet professional rhythm section, the varying grunts and screams, and the fiery solos. With Åsgards Fall 3 and Åsgards Fall 4, Helheim touch the purity of Bathory’s Hammerheart / Twilight Of The Gods era, including the harmony choirs, magisterial guitar sound, ritual drum patterns, and so much more. Of course it goes further than ‘just’ the bathorian epic (everything from Primordial over Forefather to Borknagar might come to mind), but still I consider these pieces as the most Bathory-oriented ones Helheim ever did (to date). Oðr too starts as a heroic epos, completely rooted within bathorian majesty and epic, yet rather seen from the Norwegian side (Enslaved, Borknagar, Windir, you know, that kind of aural glory), and with a much more integer, sober and melancholic atmosphere.
Throughout the years, Helheim underwent quite a transformation, though the origins, rooted within the Grieghallen-based style, have never quite disappeared. The band just evolved into a more 21st-century’ish entity, but they won’t give in to pathetic trends or modernistic cheapness.