From the moment you press play, you’re plunged into a dark, suffocating atmosphere that wouldn’t feel out of place in one of the more unsettling passages of The Last of Us. The intro of this debut album by Swedish band Hersir grabs you by the throat — a foreboding soundscape that feels like opening a door to a world where light has long since vanished. No slow build-up, no comforting melodies: this is charred bleakness from the very first second.
If that description has piqued your interest, be warned: what follows is a filthy, raw, and uncompromising Black Metal record that carves its way into your eardrums without a shred of restraint. Hersir couldn’t care less about trends, postmodern embellishments, or atmospheric escapism. You won’t find soothing synths guiding you through misty dreamscapes here. This is pure, unfiltered rage — abrasive, biting, and brutally honest — with a production that amplifies the filth rather than masking it.
What sets Hersir apart is precisely their refusal to clean things up. Every track sounds like a struggle for survival, as if recorded in a damp basement by candlelight. The guitars slice through a wall of feedback like rusty blades, the drums pound like war drums echoing through a forgotten forest, and the vocals — hoarse, raw, and utterly inhuman — seem to emanate from a place where the concept of humanity no longer exists.
And yet, within all this filth, there’s a strange kind of beauty. The band knows how to draw the listener into a trance with repetitive, dragging riffs that slowly work their way into your psyche. There are moments when the fury momentarily gives way to a brooding, ritualistic cadence — just long enough to build tension before plunging you back into a storm of scorched-earth terror.
With this debut, Hersir delivers a clear statement: Black Metal is alive — in its most venomous, unrefined form. This is an album that doesn’t aim to make friends, but rather to draw lines in ash. No encore, no compromise — only the echo of something ancient and inevitable, crawling up through the cracks in our world.
85/100
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