Finland's black metal quartet Victimarum has set 11 October as the release date for its debut album, Seitsemän soihdun valossa, which Signal Rex will release on CD and vinyl.

Forming in 2022, Victimarum quickly set to work on upholding the sterling standards of their nation's underground black metal scene. A demo and an EP followed the next year, the latter including a Horna cover, which indeed underlines the lineage from which they spring: cold and yet intensely melodic, "freezing fire" of a most early 2000s vintage. Those who know already know the names, and it's a banner still worth raising.

And Victimarum raise it even higher with its full-length debut, Seitsemän soihdun valossa. With strength and honour and Satanic black devotion, the band here unloads nine screeds of melancholic misery set to speeding stun. Incensed but not without a certain sense of ragged glory, Victimarum upholds that iron-clad template set out by its forebears and bolsters it with strong songwriting and even stronger execution. The sounds may be familiar, but as the album progresses, the Finns' personality shines through, with deft shifts in tempo and a slightly more pronounced propensity for the climactic moments to come to the fore.

Likewise, Victimarum wisely locates a production style that's on the right side of polished, the grit coming not through the sound itself but rather through the playing: you feel this, every second of its 44-minute runtime. Banners raised! Link