Bathory
Twilight Of The Gods

THE REVIEW

Cold. The song of the North, an electric waltz of dim lights among the pines, a giant with a head covered in moss, a distant sun, a glimmer amidst sleepy heaths buried under inches of powdery snow.

Tomas "Quorthon" Forsberg incessantly paints his steel chants, armed with an exacerbating simplicity to write six (or nine?) symphonies that leave one trembling and eager to transcend the boundaries of imagination, to delve into the winding paths of thickets filled with mysterious creatures created by the myth of an era steeped in sad memories and dramatically lost epicness.

The guitars march acidic and pachydermic, bringing to mind battles between Vikings and Bjarmians, evoking visions of conquests, finely adorned clothes, furs and long manes, of fierce clashes in the shadows of fjords and mountains. The North and its misty atmospheres live, breathe, shout, and enjoy Forsberg's unique ability to musicalize it and make its purity so tangible that it transforms this pearl into an unrepeatable journey.

In the Variaghs' chant "Blood And Iron", magnificently opened by vaguely Celtic and dreamy acoustic sounds, one admires the metallic musculature of slow and muddy riffs, solitary vocal lines, narrating of periods distant thousands of years. The rhythmic contribution is engraved in rock and bronze, collapsing on the Swedish's '80s solos for a finale where the chorus opens a chasm of melancholy and incessant tears.

Quorthon shouts to march under the runes, to die under the runes in the next track, and he does so with a fervor and passion that leave one trembling, astonished. Deep and sepulchral choirs refer to funeral rites lost in the void of memories, the six-string blows with the force of the Blizzard, swelling and combative melodies that we will hear again in the proud followers Immortal of the tremendous "At The Heart Of Winter".

"Bond Of Blood" instills fear, gothic and treacherous, its catacombal riffs take us through oaks and abandoned temples. The theatrical voice of the bard from Stockholm (R.I.P.) drags us away in a hurricane of nostalgic solos and thundering percussions that sink into the acoustic glimmers of Scandinavian dawns with a captivating allure.

"Hammerheart" closes triumphantly amid gusts of classical music and sumptuous vocals, a trembling, emotional soundscape that spits out the most true and uncontrollable passion, the liberating scream that instead of dirty and obsessive metal uses orchestral weapons and ethereal visions of painful sunsets.

A timeless work that does not suffer from changing trends, that does not care for coteries and labels, that celebrates the cult of the North with vigor and simplicity as befits the men of the North.

"Only they who walks the clouds knows

For how long the wind blows

And the sky is blue above us.."