By Monk
Breaking a silence of four years, these Finnish black metallers return with an epic album that echoes both the bleak beauty and the eloquent elegance of the landscape which formed, gestated and inspired this equally beautifully bleak and elegantly eloquent fourth album from a band who truly know how to blend beauty, bleakness, elegance and eloquence with a rare sense of cohesive equanimity that is as entrancing as it is enervating.
Havukruunu are one of those bands that manage to combine the dark atmospherics of the “colder” aspects of the BM genre with old-school classic metal miens and sensibilities, searing guitar histrionics combining with and counterpointing dark, dense moments of sorrowful sensitivity’
The twin guitars twist, turn and torniquet with threatening anxiety under the snapping, snarling vocals, which in turn sound like they have crawled from the very depths of the netherworld to enfold you in their laconic embrace and draw you back from whence they came.
One remarkable aspect is how low, but effectively so, the drums often are embroiled in the mix: they pulsate like the embers of dying fire, entrancing you with their almost mystical presence while at the same time making you want to slip your hand into the ashes to see if they are still warm only for last piece of molten fire to spark back into life.
‘Tavastland’ is a beautifully crafted album: rich and sonorous, dense and dynamic, appellant and appealing.
- ‘Tavastland‘ is released on Friday (28 February).
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