Now this is a real treat. Germany’s black metal masters Helrunar and Icelandic bards Árstíðir Lífsins on one release. My main concern is that two bands with such a flare for atmospheric black metal won’t even have time to get started on this two-track, 35-minute EP before it’s all cut disappointingly short. Ok so I’ve shown my cards a little early there – I’m a fan of both bands – but at the same time there’s always a part of me that’s braced for disappointment because both groups have set the bar high with past releases. Árstíðir Lífsins took a pretty good shot at producing the best pagan metal release of last year with the adventurous twists and turns of Vápna lækjar eldr. While Helrunar’s Baldr ok Íss in 2007 was huge and follow-up Sól in 2011 was even more crushingly heavy and devastating.
If anything, the split arrangement has worked perfectly. Rather than be a limiting factor, the confines of the EP have focused both bands to unleash their best sides and distil their dark art to its essence. Both bands use saga-style spoken word passages, atmospheric samples and backing singers. But Fragments exemplifies just how different these two ‘pagan’ bands can be even if they share some obvious similarities. Helrunar are a black metal band with hefty death metal sensibilities and, on the whole, monumentally heavy. Árstíðir Lífsins are more like Dark Age storytellers with one foot in the twenty-first century. The use sprawling black metal arrangements and subtle atmospheric tricks with a range of vocals from crystal-sharp screams to baleful choirs.
After a few choice samples to set the scene, Helrunar’s Wein für Polyphem strikes the first blow with serrated, obsidian guitars and that inimitable scythe-like rasp that stabs and sweeps from within the tightly held phalanx. If I’ve got my Greek mythology right, Polyphemus was the brutish one-eyed chap that was ultimately outsmarted by a bunch of guys a sixth his size. It’s a familiar story: he got drunk with someone cleverer than him and he lived to regret it. It’s a diversion from Helrunar’s traditional Northern lyrical themes or the vast and elemental story of Sól. Wein captures the frenetic moment of escape by Odysseus and pals bursting with energy and tension like a tightly held pressure valve. It’s full on and full-paced with a few characteristic pauses for breath. It’s also fifteen minutes that confirms Helrunar as a creative force of nature right down to the final chanting dirge to the wretched Cyclopean villain that takes up the last third of the track. Wein slowly shrugs off Polyphemus titanic and emotional tirade before ending beautifully with a drifting lament to those that didn’t make it on some azure blue Mediterranean shore line.
If Helrunar is the more straightforward of the two sides of the EP, Árstíðir Lífsins soon sets about redefining the word ‘epic’ with a journey into the mists of the distant past. Slow and reflective to begin with before tearing into an anthemic, chanting frost giant of a track. Árstíðir is undoubtedly a folk metal band but there are icy blasts here would give any pure black metal band a run for its florins. The track gradually finds its pace in a rhythmic hymn-like groove with the choirs and vocals rising and falling like a well-versed group of journeyed storytellers in a fire-lit mead-hall. The tale builds up into a final eight minutes of darkened, mesmerising bliss with horns and other traditional instruments providing the backdrop to the unfolding chronicle. It’s a truly expansive piece that feels like it fills every second of the 20 minutes with some element that’s vital to the spell. Árstíðir Lífsins are so far from the jigging, tin whistle-end of the pagan metal crowd they are almost sullied by any comparison.
It would be nice to think there is more to come from the collaboration – more Fragments perhaps. But, if not, this fine EP will just have to stand on its own as a moment in time and a unifying testament to two great bands.
(9/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
http://www.arstidirlifsins.net/
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