Although I had brief communication with musician Efraah Enhsikaah asking about review possibility, there is hardly any information available about the mysterious artist and I thought it would be impertinent to dig for further facts. In this time of everything being presented to you at the click of a button, an air of intrigue is important especially in the ethos of black metal and I consider that should be respected. There’s no presence on social media or the normal places one would go looking for knowledge and even the label and biography give very little away apart from the fact that this is a debut album and that Meyhna’ch of the infamous French act Mütiilation provides some guest vocals here.

Enigmatic it all may be but nature in all her glacial glory seeps from the cover-art into the music here as the title-track takes form. A barren landscape is presented in a place where mankind doth not trespass and if they do they are likely to add their corpse to the hardy terrain to be picked at by carrion birds waiting to swoop. Icy desolation is illustrated by cold, ponderous riffs and atmosphere is quickly enforced over a slow, mesmerising canvas of isolation. Vocal rasps provide a ruggedness as our explorer surveys his frozen domain and the vultures can clearly be heard awaiting his weary body to drop but there is determination here that proves they will have to go hungry for now. Nothing grows apart from the hardiest ‘Letharia Vulpina’ and the mossy bedrock has been untouched for aeons. The timeless feeling is replicated musically as we stubbornly trudge onwards in anguished torment but a sparkle in the otherwise dour melody keeps makes it all worthwhile as splendour graces our voyager in this otherwise untrodden realm. Having scaled a particularly hostile summit a burst of speed and energy is found on ‘Budgeting For Betrayal’ perhaps there is a bounty on the head and more than just wolves hot on the trail as things gallop off with feral charge? There’s certainly a story at the heart of the album and things have taken a big turn into the adventurous side of it all.

‘Running Into The Abyss’ sees vocals getting craggier and some strange reverberating tones from the stringed instruments. There’s a sense of the macabre about it all and a steadfast clamouring stomp before some classic sounding guitar weaving surfaces on ‘Dead Sun Shines Bright’ and one wonders if we have entered a hellish desert furnace much to the delight of the ever-circling vultures. I can’t help but envisage some sort of black metal Western as we follow through to ‘Cold Blood And Broken Teeth’ and it is one of savagery and violence although dramatic, musically disciplined in pace. It ends with ‘Fed’ a stylistic change to an acoustic folky campfire song. The hunters were dispersed and it is they that are being feasted on by the relentless birds of prey whilst our pioneer rests his weary bones for a while, or till the next album at the very least…

Plenty of imagery to be found here, whether my interpretation is right or wrong and I found myself really absorbed by the storytelling going on within the album. Perhaps the solitude and plight of this musical gunslinger should be kept shrouded in mystery for now as although he is a man with an apparent name, where he comes from remains the stuff of legends.

(8/10 Pete Woods)

https://osmoseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/one-thousand-vultures-waiting-to-be-fed