Purity ThroughFire sets May 31st as the international release date for Vananidr‘s highly anticipated second album, Road North, on CD format.
Just earlier this year, Purity ThroughFire widely released Vananidr‘s self-titled debut album. Originally self-released digitally, Vananidr may havebeen Vananidr‘s first public recording, but the band’s history stretches back many years – which was immediately evident once the listener was presented with such black metal of an ancient vintage.
Vananidr‘s history begins in the mid ’90s when Titan (now in IXXI) forms the band Hydra. In 1999, he is accompanied by Anders Eriksson AKA Flame (guitar), Erebus (vocals), and Thunder (drums, now also in IXXI). Over the next five years, they record several demos and an album titled Phaedra. When recordings for the second album are begun, Erebus quits the band and the following year Titan also quits. In 2010, Anders picks up the pieces of the unfinished recordings and records the vocals himself, and the album is finally finished under a new band name: Synodus Horrenda. Progress is slow, but in 2017, Anders completes a new album with Thunder on drums and later changes the band name once again to the more suiting Vananidr.
With Anders now the only remaining member from the Hydra years since Thunder disappeared along the way, across Road North do Vananidr breathe cold, cryptic life into classicist, ’90s-style black metal. Whereas the self-titled album was largely somber, shadowy, and evoked a woodland mysticism, the aptly titled Road North explores colder and more unforgiving realms. An undulating snowstorm of white-hot melodicism, here Vananidr present an overtly more aggressive side that nevertheless retains its predecessor’s dynamics. Songwriting is still key, much like it was in the ’90s, and even amongst those undulating waves of violence is the listener presented with epic visions, a spell that’s less subtle but equally intense.
Like many records under the Purity ThroughFire banner, the past is again truly alive with Vananidr‘s Road North! Begin walking north along that road with the new track “Melancholy March” HERE at Purity Through Fire‘s Bandcamp. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Vananidr’s Road North
1. Cold Dead Skin
2. Melancholy March
3. Bleak and Desolate
4. Drowned in Hells Fire
5. Raining Fire
6. Plains of Desolation
7. Shadow of the Past
8. Beneath the Glimmering Surface
9. Introduction to Ancient Powers
10. Ancient Powers
11. Purgatory
MORE INFO:
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