Ever get tired of the lyrics of your favorite black metal bands being written in some obscure “eldritch” dialect that with a short visit to Google Translate becomes known as modern Norse or High German? Do you see Chaucer as a false for using Middle English in Canterbury Tales? Feel like Cascadian black metal’s “alright if you like that sort of thing”, but long for something evoking your eldritch and Cumbrian ancestral home? Behealdan ÚLFARR!
Birthed and guided by founder Dominus (aka Hfran), in 2011, ÚLFARR has unchained new material regularly since, yet Orlegsceaft be its first march into the full-length fray and its most realized as a full band. From the beginning, the instrumental title track ushers in a feeling of otherworldliness, continuing in ‘…Hie dygel lond’. It’s suddenly the early-mid ‘90s once more, but we’ll leave you to decide if we’re in the 1990s or 490s, so positively age-old is the sound conjured and cast down before us. Ghosts of DARKTHRONE rise, bloodied warrior kings not observing from the safety of castle turrets, but wading into battle alongside their countrymen.
‘Wælgæst wæfre’ is rending, tenor shred and vocal scathe, bolstered by a staid rhythm section, yet at times ventures into the same realms inhabited by CELTIC FROST’s Into The Pandemonium, trippy yet terrifying. ‘Trollblót’ brings riff after headbanging, blood-boiling riff, exuding the same punk/speed/thrash fury that ENGLISH DOGS did on Forward Into Battle but rarely gets credit for in black metal circles, yet vocalist Játvarðr from time to time slips into an almost Atilla Csihar-styled throat singing, which only lends a more graven, ancient air to the proceedings.
‘Volkfire’ is the last “proper” song found here and follows much the same pattern as what’s come before, but that’s far from a detraction when what ÚLFARR has created with Orlegsceaft is an album unflinchingly on its own terms. Befitting, as it’s also my last written review for 2023. I say again, behealdan ÚLFARR!
Review By: Lord Randall
ÚLFARR
Orlegsceaft
Purity Through Fire