Review Summary: We’re too old, too fucking cold
As someone who is both a metal fan and a lighthearted dude, I’ve always gotten a lot of enjoyment from reading promotional blurbs for extreme metal releases. This isn’t just because these writeups share the tendency of label writeups in general to make sweeping and grandiose claims which are rarely truly backed up by the music itself, but more specifically because they tend to stray deep into pretentious and cornball territory. I mention all this because the Bandcamp page for Misþyrming’s third LP,
Með hamri, at first glance appears to be a prime example of the phenomenon. Full of phrases like “a celebration of violence and excess”, not to mention “this is the Devil’s music made manifest”, I can’t deny that I grinned widely while reading it.
The previous paragraph, to be clear, is not put there just to roast the writers, even more so since those quotations are apparently the words of the band themselves describing their vision of the album. And I have nothing against this band, with their discography up to this point essentially unblemished. The broader point is that, after listening to
Með hamri, it’s frankly rather shocking how accurate a lot of the claims made are. Indeed, this record is about as visceral and aggressive as I’ve heard in black metal for a while.
Perhaps Misþyrming’s biggest strength throughout their existence so far has been the seamless melding of old and new in black metal, and that continues here. The tunes are raw and fiery, but also meld both melody and dissonance which harken to more recent metallic trends. All told, it’s another album producing a feeling of glacial frigidity fitting of the group’s Icelandic origins, but this time their elemental bent has been twisted into a more unrelentingly furious effort.
Með hamri isn’t actually notably short (it’s the middle of the band’s three LPs in runtime), but it feels more focused, rejecting most interludes or excursions in favor of persistent, passionate, menace. That isn’t to say that everything is one-note, though. Witness the difference between the speedy approach of the opening title track and the mid-tempo romp of “Með harmi”, a worthy one-two punch, as well as the bursts of murky ambience which often demarcate between songs, offering a bit of respite while not truly altering the album’s glowering atmosphere.
All told, I’m not sure that
Með hamri reaches the highest summits which 2019’s
Algleymi offered, but that’s not much of a gripe, given the latter is one of the finest black metal albums in recent memory. As a follow-up, this record is more than satisfactory, continually plumbing the depths of the band’s signature style, but offering a different angle as their most obviously wrathful and furious release. There aren’t a lot of artists who can offer up songs as catchy as some of these numbers (“Engin vorkunn”, for example) while still feeling uncompromisingly brutal, not to mention cranking out the feeling of iciness which suggests they’ve never left the Arctic Circle (technically, Iceland is below the Arctic Circle, but you get the point). The great Darkthrone lyrics used for the summary about tie it up. Or, better yet, I’ll leave it to the band themselves, since their description of the record has proved unexpectedly apt: “the hammer leaves no room for interpretation”.
