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Icelandic black metal band Óreiða will release their self-titled debut album on 20th April via Harvest Of Death. Hailing from the modern black metal hotbed of Iceland, Óreiða are an enigma within a scene rife with enigmas. A nameless but by no means faceless entity, Óreiða made its/their first public recording with Demó I in 2016, which was soon released on cassette and 7" vinyl formats at the beginning of 2017 by Harvest of Death. Ensorcelled by the entity's monolithic trance-out black metal, Harvest of Death released in late 2017 Óreiða's one-track/20-minute Demó II on cassette, which was soon followed by a split 10" with Portuguese comrades Holocausto Em Chamas the following year.
With a sort of paradoxically "enlightened" primitivism, each of the album's four icy, component screeds surges into being and locks onto near-stasis, hovering and taunting in equal measure. Deceptively, each of those four epics seems comprised of one or perhaps two riffs total; delve deeper - or deliver thyself to total immersion - and discover a wealth of textural magick, subtly dynamic details in which to drown and rearrange one's mental parameters. Likewise, the seemingly wholesale lack of vocals is both stark and stratifying; allow that immersion, that submission to drowning, and then truly hear reverse voices of the dead wafting up from the soundfield to whisper buried secrets. Through it all, a shimmering, stained-glass style of melodicism emerges (synth? more guitars? both?), simultaneously at odds with the lifelessly pulsing black metal at hand and making perfect, alternate-world sense.
Once again, Harvest of Death points the way for the future by dragging it beyond a primitive past: here lies, and arises, Óreiða's Óreiða. Arise with the new track "Draumar" and you can of course hear in the player below. Link