Greve - Nordarikets strid (2020)

As a highly mysterious duo from Sweden, Greve unleashes upon the masses their debut full-lenght release “Nordarikets strid”. Featuring an eerie retro Atmospheric/Symphonic Black Metal sound, this album transport the listeners across aural planes with its incisive furious onslaughts and dramatic atmospherics.

Setting the mood with a dreamy intro, “Vid Dödens Tröskel” fully unleashes Greve’s fury with pummeling drums and piercing shrieks. The band’s Black Metal core is on point, delivering waves of crushing riffs and crafty tempo changes to keep things interesting as one can hear on the album title track and the Dissection-esque “I Svarta Solens Magi”.

Being more than a one-trick pony, Greve perfectly delivers intricate compositions like “Det Gamla Rikets Ruin”, mixing up tempos while keeping the ethereal atmospherics front and center. The mixture of growls and shrieks adds an extra layer of madness to the music thanks to vocalist Lik’s talents. There is a certain naivety to the band’s tracks that makes them quite engaging, being both basic in its core but intricate enough to deliver furious headbanging passages and atmospheric dominance.

Perfectly ordering more dark and sinister tracks (“Ur Nordiskt Vrede”) before all out hellish onslaughts (“Offerbål till Gudarna”), allows this release to flow quite dramatically while assaulting the listener’s senses. As a whole, “Nordarikets strid” is one hell of a release filled with haunting atmospherics and punishing BM passages. If you are a fan of bands like Vargrav, Limbonic Art, and Tartaros, you will love this release.

Label: Purity Through Fire

Release: January 31st, 2020

Genre: Atmospheric/Symphonic Black Metal

Country: Sweden