Ah, Gurthang the sword meaning “the iron of death”. The band behind the reference from Tolkien’s “Silmarillion” is from Poland and this is their seventh album.

The intro or prologue as it’s called is sinister and doomy. Things fly in the air distantly. This signals the descent into grainy black heaviness. Dark, dingy and stifling is “Structures of Constriction”, driven along with uncompromising drum work, an evil black metal riff, and distant sounding, echoing vocals. This has nastiness written all over it. Slowly and patiently “spasms of Reflection” progress. The hissing vocal and overall dirty ambience reminds me of earlier Burzum. Atmospherically this isn’t nice as it crawls along. The quiet guitar line merely serves to raise the horror level. The riff line is repetitive and hypnotic. Everything is done to make sure we don’t have a nice time listening to this sinister slab of evil.

“Concealed Beneath” has a simple black metal rawness with another hypnotic guitar line accompanying the drum. The track continues in deliberately grey fashion. Another dark slab of a structure kicks off “In the Shrines of Self-Creation”, a black-industrial and sombre piece. Depressing, depressive, oppressive …. such is the track “hearts of the Hollow”. Actually, oppressive covers all of it. Leaden-heavy and punishing with a withering riff running through it, no-one’s being left off the hook here. “The apathy of Decadence” continues the torture and is barely distinguishable from what has gone before, save a haunting chant. Everything points to horrible death. The album closes inevitably with what else but a depressive and weighty little ditty.

No quarter is given here. “Hearts of the Hollow” is harsh and uncompromising, as Polish metal so often is. Gurthang grind us down with their evil and suffocating brand of black metal. Now it’s finished, I can drag myself off the floor after being pinned down by 40 minutes of weight and heaviness.

(7/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://www.facebook.com/Gurthang.Official

https://digital.immortalfrostproductions.com/album/hearts-of-the-hollow