Review Summary: Craving soaring, melodic Tolkiencore medieval black metal? You're in the right place.
Pulling inspiration from the writings of Tolkien is about as canon as you can get in heavy metal. It’s been baked into the genre since Black Sabbath’s debut and shows no signs of waning any time soon. What’s more interesting though is how bands choose to keep adapting and pulling inspiration from a body of literature that’s long been penned and sealed up. Of course there are the obvious titans – Burzum, Summoning, Gorgoroth to name a few – along with incalculable other bands. While invoking muses from the same source, it’s always interesting how diverse the actual music ends up being, ranging from atmospheric to folk flavors of black metal. But as of late, a handful of Tolkien worshipping black metallers have conjured and cut their way to the top of the orc pile. One of those bands is One of Nine, who released one of last year’s most fun meloblack albums with
Dawn of the Iron Shadow. This June, Germany’s Grabunhold added another worthy entry to that long lineage with their sophomore full-length album
Frostheim.
Frostheim finds Grabunhold more or less tightening the sounds found on their debut. The band seems content weaving Tolkien-inspired medieval black metal in the vein of Darkenhold or Obsequiae with a bit more of a traditional second-wave bent, and does it very well. The riffs are triumphant and lofty, with melodies almost always riding high above the galloping drums. The songs progress naturally through suffocating valleys of tremolos to thinner forests of twin-guitar leads and arpeggiated melodies that provide breathing room amid the nearly constantly-driving tempo found on this album. And driving it is, with only the atmospheric dungeon synth track “Über Grat und kalten Gipfel” to really offer some reprieve from the blackened charge.
The vocal performance on
Frostheim is also solid, though frontman and guitarist Irrwycht never deviates much from his gravelly screams. This itself is a departure from their debut album which found him occasionally dipping his proverbial toes into DSBM territory or warbling some choral singing. Irrwycht seems comfortable taking a back seat to the consistently engrossing instrumentals, which are more polished and focused on this record, and frequently lets them guide the songs. I unfortunately don’t speak German, and the lyrics don’t seem to be available online, but the song names pretty much sum up what to expect with titles like “In Mordor, wo die Schatten drohn” (In Mordor, where the shadows loom) or “Der Tod wohnt in Carn Dûm” (Death dwells in Carn Dûm).
This album seems to find Grabunhold at the top of their game for this style of medieval black metal.
Frostheim provides almost everything you could ask for from a genre exercise and then some. It’s more than capable, holds your attention and doesn’t stick around past its sell-by date. It’s also a cauldron-full of fun. That said,
Frostheim doesn’t quite reach the same highs as some of its peers in the medieval black metal micro-genre. The fist pounding moments are frequent, but not quite as rapturous or unique as you’ve probably heard. The atmosphere is exuberant and rowdy but never lets itself truly cut loose. Still, this is an excellent record that I would wholeheartedly recommend to any metal fan, especially those with an ear for the medieval, triumphant and melodic.
