ÚLFARR’s debut full-length, Orlegsceaft, arriving as it did in late December of 2023 gave it both the notable honor of being the last album released in the year that I’d review and allowed it to qualify for my much-respected Top 20 albums list for 2023. Which it did. And now, they’ve done it again. The Cumbrian horde returneth with Fornetes Folm / His Crown Grows From His Skull.

‘Alarūna’ ushers we in, conjuring the droning incant of Atilla Csihar initially, but soon enough shifting to early CRAFT in attack, merciless, but more ancient, and the more foreboding for it. Slicing sheets of treble rain (and reign) down during ‘Hildeleoma’, leaving no doubt as to the time period to which ÚLFARR swears allegiance. There’s simply something so inherently antediluvian about the band, and always has been, that the entirety of Fornetes Folm gives the impression of being recorded in the subterranean world conjured by Lovecraft’s ‘The Rats In The Walls’, and certain works of Algernon Blackwood. ‘Algol (As Malice Shone Upon Northward Doors) finds new arrival Játvarðr most comfortable in this skin, at once festering, gurgling inhuman…naturally unnatural, one might say.

Lyrically penned by 19th-century English artist, textile designer and writer William Morris, ‘November’ pensively thrives in its dark night, while ‘Moonskin’ revels, otherworldly splashes of blood and pale lunar lunacy across the canvas painted by founder Dominus, disjointed, Goya-in-the-throes-of-madness guitar. It’s ‘Glæterung’ and ‘The Cold Council Of Old Shadow’, though, that smite, level, obliterate with unbridled fever and blood-clouded vision, and stand in this album as high points, the lurch and lurk of the latter being every bit as horrific as ‘Glæterung’ is in its speed-driven pace, brought by Nosdrahcir’s rumbling bass and drum assault.

After the utterly unexpected and almost pastoral ‘Intro’, ‘Ānforlætan’ and ‘In Veneration Of The Corpse Eaters Star’ complete and comprise the His Crown Grows From His Skull EP, yielding nothing in quality or passion despite the material’s relative brevity compared to what’s come before.

ÚLFARR, you have delivered on every expectation.
Review By: Lord Randall

ÚLFARR
Fornetes Folm / His Crown Grows From His Skull
Purity Through Fire