HRAFNGRÍMR: Niflheims Auga (PAGAN/VIKING METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

What do you do when you've taken part in the Skald epic? Well, you build your own drakkar to continue exploring Norse myths. Thus was born Hrafngrimr (“The one who wears the raven's mask”) under the leadership of Mattjö Haussy. Initially presented as a collective of artists, the group has gradually grown closer around the couple formed by the former Skald and singer Christine Roche, supported by numerous musicians including Mostepha Elkamal (Arkan), Nicolas Derolin and Arnaud Stefanakis in charge of percussion and other traditional instruments (bouzouki, gembri, lyre...).

After several songs over the months, followed by the “Hólmganga” EP (2022), the first album finally saw the light of day. From a distance, Hrafnfrimr could pass for just another Nordic folk huckster, despite the genre's great success in the wake of Wardruna, whose music seems to have awakened the Viking soul in many a metalhead. But this is obviously not the case. On the contrary, the band has forged an identity all its own, based on a number of elements.

The duality between Mattjö's guttural vocals and Christine's more misty ones, modern-inspired lyrics transposed into Old Norse, a rough musicality or a musical syncretism blending Scandinavian and Eastern influences forge a dark, hypnotic saraband vibrating with a powerfully evocative tribal pulse. “Niflheims Auga” picks up where ‘Hólmganga’ left off and expands it tenfold, giving it cinematic scope and a pulsating, twilight-like emphasis.

Barely forty minutes long, each of these nine tracks has been elaborated with precision and meticulousness, jewels of writing and arrangement magnified by an enveloping sound recording. Ancestral instrumentation and a vast vocal palette come together for a ritualized plunge into ancient times shrouded in mineral coldness. Singing in Norse, whether male or female, lends this haunting mound a harsh poetry ('Ferdin').

Despite its granitic harshness, “Niflheims Auga” is constantly bewitching, whether it resounds like a warrior ritual ('Allt Til Valhallar Dura') or echoes an inexorable sadness, as witness the painful 'Skuggar' or 'Yfir Tarin', carried by Christine Roche whose emotionally charged voice is caressed by fragile lyre notes against a percussion background that sounds like the heartbeat of the earth.

This creation straddles two worlds. Geographical, in that it bridges the gap between mythological fjords and the shores of the Mediterranean. Temporal, as it honors the past through the prism of more modern texts. And musical, with instrumental hybridization and vocal ambivalence between guttural and more sententious registers that respond to each other, complementing each other as much as they clash ('Bryr'), within an ensemble swallowed up by darkness throughout.

Tribal rather than bouncy, dramatic rather than playful, funereal rather than luminous, “Niflheims Auga” summons forces from the depths of the ages, carving landscapes with a taste of blood and ashes, bridges between the dead and the living that confirm Hrafngrimr as one of the undisputed leaders of ambient Nordic folk, which he blackens with a telluric theatricality. - Official website

HRAFNGRÍMR

NIFLHEIMS AUGA

SEASON OF MIST

PAGAN/VIKING METAL