Eisenwald Tonschmeide, 2017
Genre: Black Metal
1. The Second Baptism... Shores in Fire and Ice
2. Winter Descent's Eve... I Become the Journey
3. Lunar Rites... Beholding the Towers of Barad-Dur
4. From the Northern Wallachian Forest... Tyranny Returns
5. Archaic Magic... A Cenotaph Below the Cursed Moon
6. Inclinata Resurgit... Rebirth of My Noble Dark Kingdom
When Eisenwald announced they were releasing the new Evilfeast I was extremely excited for this. Just looking at their cover choice just immediately pulls you into the album. The booklet design for the prior albums was okay and worked, but with Eisenwald pressing this they went in for a little more detail and what a beautiful booklet and layout. It features very compelling pictures that work with each song in a wonderful way. Remember though, make sure you have over an hour to devote to listening to this album, which is the standard for Evilfeast material.
It's interesting to note that GrimSpirit spent a lot more time working on this material than his other full-lengths, because we have quite a long break between now and the last full-length. However, that time was clearly well spent, because these are, by far, the best Evilfeast compositions I've ever heard. This album is truly a master work for GrimSpirit, and while I've always enjoyed the material he really pushed himself on this release. The atmosphere and guitar riffs are all top notch and I won't be surprised to see this hit my top 10 for 2017 at all. He's managed to incorporate so many different influences into a single album, that it's like listening to the best riffs of the past history of Black Metal, but all recast in a way that only Evilfeast really knows how! His tracking and drum performance have improved dramatically over the years to the point where his performance is extremely spot on and sometimes quite varied and creative. He's even incorporating some intense atmospheric moments in sections, such as in "Lunar Rites... Beholding the Towers of Barad-Dur" where I hear distinct Darkspace/Paysage d'Hiver styled moments between the keyboards and guitars. The droning blasting just amplifies feel of those projects. Then we also have some incredible riffs featured on "Winter Descent's Eve... I Become the Journey" that just hook you in right away. That song ended way too soon for such a lengthy track.
Another aspect that is a bit different is there are no stand alone ambient tracks. GrimSpirit moved away from those on "Lost Horizons of Wisdom", but with the promo, I thought maybe he would bring them back. So, I was surprised to see the Ambient moments more built into the songs themselves, which I think works a lot better for Evilfeast. We'll even hear elements of acoustic passages added into the music, such as with songs like "From the Northern Wallachian Forest... Tyranny Returns". This all before moving into one of the most Gorgoroth riffs I've ever heard him compose. This song also has some of the clean vocal styles we heard on "Invoking the Ancient". I like the fact that he uses them quite sparingly and only in moments that work well with the music. He's clearly going for a bit of a Garm feel with the vocal performance and I'm certainly not about to complain about that.
In the end we really do have the finest Evilfeast release, in my opinion. This is just so over the top excellent compared to the prior releases, that this will probably turn into my "go to" Evilfeast album when I'm interested in listening to their music. If you've been a long running fan of the project, I'm sure you won't be disappointed, but I'd recommend any fan of long atmospheric works to check out this release. It has a lot on here to satisfy a lot of moods. Now the real challenge... can he top this for the next Evilfeast release? I'll be surprised if he does, but I always look forward to hearing more from this project.
Funeral Sound Productions, 2015
Genre: Black Metal
1. Intro
2. A Cenotaph Below the Cursed Moon
3. Outro
It's been a couple years since we've heard from Evilfeast and perhaps Grimspirit decided to show off some in process work for things to come or to just put material out there in search of a new label to work with. Either way, here we have a single song demo tape. This comes with a pro-printed cover and a dubbed tape. It's limited to 150 hand-numbered copies and I own #22.
The track Evilfeast is showcasing here has a bit of a lo-fi quality to it production wise, which is a bit different than we've gotten used to as Grimspirit has been increasing his production value quite a bit lately. So, it's interesting to feel a step back and get a slightly more raw product, but as with his newer material it works in either format. The music is similar to what we heard on "Wintermoon Enchantment", but it feels like he's progressed the feel and beauty of his songwriting even more this time around. If this is an indicator of things to come, I think we're in for something quite special with the next release from Grimspirit. I'm glad we were able to hear something in process, just to get a glimpse of things to come.
Obscure Abhorrence Productions, 2013
Genre: Black Metal
1. Invoking the Ancient
2. The Nine Ghosts (Osculum Infame cover)
This is a somewhat unusual release for Evilfeast since Grimspirit doesn't really release one off tracks that much. He did that with "Wolves of Hyperborean Frost" so maybe we're seeing a new promotional thing with this artist. The interesting thing with these releases is the cover songs, which won't appear on any of his full-lengths. In the past Evilfeast has been pretty focused on releasing tape editions of this type of material, but for this release he turned to Obscure Abhorrence to release a special 10" vinyl limited to 300 copies. While they were at it, they also pressed a vinyl version of the "Wolves in Hyperborean Frost" demo tape. I'm actually surprised these things aren't hand-numbered!
The song "Invoking the Ancient" is of similar high quality to the prior album. This time, however, he's thrown a bit more into the mix. With this song there's a couple sections that have clean chanting styled vocals. Anytime he delves into that section of the song I get a distinct Ulver vibe from the performance. It's actually very cool and I wouldn't be opposed to him throwing this into his music from time to time. Very few bands can pull off that old Ulver feel, but Evilfeast blended it into his usual repertoire quite well.
For the second track on this album Evilfeast turned to an Osculum Infame song originally released in 1997 on their album "Dor-Nu-Fauglith", even though I knew about the band at the time, I still missed out on that release and I regret it to this day. Ah well... Evilfeast did a really great job on this cover song. Grimspirit really managed to capture the atmosphere of their material and update the production quality a little bit more, so it was really nice to see this cast under the Evilfeast lens. I also enjoyed hearing Evilfeast cover some actual Black Metal material... maybe someday he'll do a cover of something off of Satyricon's "Dark Medieval Times".
Nykta Records, 2011
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal
1.Intro: Open the Mysteries from Beyond
2. Fullmoon Over the Eastern Woods
3. Tradition-Heritage-Destiny
4. The Wind & the Old Willows
5. Interlude: Passing the Meadows in Woe
6. Wolves of Hyperborean Frost
7. Summoning the Splendour Once Fallen
8. Outro: Descent into the Starlit Spheres
After getting a taste of what this album would sound like on the "Wolves of Hyperborean Frost" demo, I feel like I'm a bit more surprised at the overall presentation of this. This album really brings back the feel of some of the early 90's Black Metal in a way that I haven't heard in many years. This CD also comes with a very nicely designed booklet. Probably the nicest design so far in the Evilfeast discography. The booklet is also printed on full gloss paper, which got popular for some time in the Black Metal world, but I feel like it was popular before 2011.
"Wintermoon Enchantment" is definitely pushes the atmospheric boundaries quite a bit. I think this release also hearkens back to the mid-90's era of Black Metal quite a bit. As usual Evilfeast keeps the core Satyricon/Emperor build as the main backbone of his music, but on this album I feel like he shifts in some early Arcturus, early Gehenna and some Old Man's Child into the mix. There's probably some old Dimmu, but all those other bands are better. This Evilfeast album is quite a bit more intense than "Lost Horizons of Wisdom" and we rarely get the airy keyboard interlude in the midst of a track. Instead Grimspirit keeps the Black Metal flowing throughout the entirety of a song, which is probably why the intro, outro and interlude are strictly keyboard pieces. I actually like this format a little more and I think it works with the Evilfeast sound very well. Evilfeast is never really Ambient enough in the way something like Paysage d'Hiver is to really have that ominous Ambient break in the midst of a song that really builds back into a Black Metal onslaught. Instead each track is more focused on generating the atmosphere necessary to drive the song. The keyboards mainly serve to add that majestic atmosphere you'll hear with the Symphonic Black Metal bands, but Evilfeast is far more guitar driven and riff heavy by comparison.
As with the other releases this album spans well over an hour in listening time. However, I feel like the time is well spent and this is definitely one of the best albums in the Evilfeast discography as far as I'm concerned. It's certainly my favorite so far, because it manages to blend in all those elements I've been really wanting him to blend together. "Lost Horizons of Wisdom" really starts doing the blends I wanted, but I feel like "Wintermoon Enchantment" really refines the idea behind that and creates for a much more immersive and exciting listen. Definitely a high point for the Evilfeast discography so far!
Funeral Sound Productions, 2009
Genre: Black Metal
1. Wolves of Hyperborean Frost
2. Himmel aus Eis/Der tod Wuotans (Burzum cover)
After releasing some great material through record labels Evilfeast returned to the demo tape world a year after one of their best releases. This is kind of strange to me, but maybe Grimspirit was looking to experiment a bit more? This was originally released on Grimspirit's own label Funeral Sound Productions limited to 50 hand-numbered copies. It's no surprise I missed out on that and instead of the 10" vinyl edition published by Obscure Abhorrence in 2013 limited to 300 copies.
The first song is very similar to "Lost Horizons of Wisdom" and if this is an indicator for the next full-length I think we're going to all find that as good as the prior album. The main progression featured on this song reminds me of some other Scandinavian project, but I just can't remember it off the top of my head. Either way it's quite a good song and in line with the direction Evilfeast was developing on the last album. The production quality is a little lower, but that's probably because this was merely intended as a demo. After this on side B we have entirely Ambient material. It's somewhat of a curiosity, because the first part is an original Ambient piece and that immediately flows into a Burzum cover. Most bands would cover something from Burzum's metal material, but not Evilfeast, he's covering a track found on the infamous Ambient albums, this one being from "Hliðskjálf". Covering an ambient track is flat out unusual any way you look at it, so it's kind of interesting that Grimspirit went after this. He did a good job on it too for what it is. I'm not a very big fan of Burzum's Ambient material and Evilfeast's Ambient material is only okay as a stand alone. Like a lot of these bands, their ambience is best blended with the Black Metal guitars.
After hearing him do covers, I'd actually really love to hear Evilfeast cover something from Satyricon's "Dark Medieval Times", because I think he could really nail that atmosphere! In any event, if the Black Metal song on here is any indicator of the next album, then we'll all be looking forward to another great release from this project.
Nykta Records, 2008
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal
1. Algol's Northern Lights
2. Grim Spirit, the Forest Wanderer
3. Cages of Cold Despondency
4. My Tower Among the Timeless Mountains
5. Lost Horizons of Wisdom
After the atrocious production issues with the Marblebog split, I was semi-worried about the next release. I was hoping Grimspirit would return to his standard form of the earlier albums and that's basically exactly what he did with "Lost Horizons of Wisdom". Even though there are only five tracks on this album, make sure you have some time to devote, because this release is over an hour in length. The shortest song clocks in at a mere 11 minutes! The booklet layout is much nicer this time around compared to the prior albums. In fact it kind of reminds me of the layout and design on a few Vinterriket releases.
"Lost Horizons of Wisdom" is actually an extremely well done and excellent album. Grimspirit finally did what I sort of wanted him to do, which is blend together his faster material with the slower more atmospheric style. This has added an interesting effect that it doesn't really sound exactly like Emperor/Satyricon blended together even though he's now playing closer to Emperor tempos. I think he also put some work into cleaning up his guitar tone a little bit, which is great, because I always thought his guitar sounded a bit fuzzy.
Musically this album trends a lot more into the realms of Atmospheric Black Metal than Evilfeast ever has before. With the increased speed and slight change in guitar tone, I feel like a lot more influence is coming from projects like Paysage d'Hiver and some of the German bands that play a more atmospheric sound. There is still the clear Emperor/Satyricon styled influence, but this album feels more and more like Evilfeast is striking out on their own and writing songs that are starting to feel a lot more unique in the annals of Black Metal. Some of the Ambient sections seem influenced by Vinterriket, which makes sense given the way the layout looks.
In the end, despite its length, I did find this a really worthwhile listen. Some people may find the album to be a bit overlong, but I really enjoyed every song, so I can't really complain. For me this is where the Evilfeast project really begins to take off. While the prior albums are good, there's just something about "Lost Horizons of Wisdom" that strikes a different atmosphere in some ways. In any event, if you wanted to hear Evilfeast's combination of speed and atmosphere, this is the album where they take that on and quite successfully.
Alles-Stenar, 2008
Genre: Black Metal
Evilfeast: Isenheim
1. Dawn of Winter
2. Isenheimen
3. My Journey into Cold Infinity
Marblebog: Abyss Calls...
4. Hiv a Mélység
5. Keresés
6. Ébredj!
7. Csendhajnal
Side Marblebog: ...coming eventually...
Side Evilfeast:
After a rather no-frills album like "Funeral Sorcery" it was interesting to see this split open with an ambient track that is over six minutes long. After that the Black Metal hits in with "Isenheimen". I don't know what in the world happened, but this album's production is way worse than the other releases. I feel like Grimspirit was trying to get the drums to sound better in the mix or at least more prominent compared to "Funeral Sorcery", but he fell into a trap with the snare drum. There's this annoying frequency his snare is emitting and it's just taking over the entire mix. He also seems to have some other issues, because parts of the drum mix have this weird "whooshing" sound when he goes into the blast beats. Either way, it just crushes the experience for me, it's not one of those good raw production things, its a distracting one. I understand the desire to close mic the snare... but figuring out how to control that takes a little while. In any event it's really mainly problematic when you play fast, so the song "Isenheim" gets drowned out. "My Journey into Cold Infinity" is a great deal slower, so the offending snare frequencies are not as much of a problem here.
The song "Isenheim" is similar to what we heard on "Funeral Sorcery" and "My Journey into Cold Infinity" feels more like a far slower version of a song that could have found its way onto "Mysteries of the Nocturnal Forest". In the grand scheme of things, the actual full-lengths are far better, in my opinion. Evilfeast's music on here is well composed, but ruined by poor production moves. Hopefully Grimspirit will sort this drum mixing issue out on future albums, because it would be a shame to have a full-length marred in this way.
Funeral Sound Productions, 2005
Genre: Black Metal
1. Funeral Sorcery
2. I Reach the Winter Twilight
3. Krone aus kalten sternen
4. Tale of Carpathian Wind
5. Iconoclast Eminence
6. Im schatten der majestät des eistodes
This is the second album from Evilfeast and it was originally released on tape by Grimspirit's own label limited to 300 hand-numbered copies. However, a CD edition of this was released in 2008 by Alles Stennar and that's the version I own. The liner notes say this music was composed between February and May, which is a pretty quick turn around for Grimspirit and the music is a little different compared to what came before. I almost wonder if this was originally intended as some kind of demo or a different approach to music he wanted to play.
The biggest difference you'll notice right away is how fast this music is. It seems, to me, he was trying to delve into the faster albums from Satyricon and Emperor and "Funeral Sorcery" results in being a pretty fast blast beat friendly album. Maybe he just wanted to push the speed envelope as a musician to see if he could do it! I've done that before, because if you can play very fast accurately, you can also play at all the tempos below that speed and it gives you a lot more room to work on your music. Sometimes the drums feel a little sloppy in places, so I think he might be pushing his personal speed limit a bit much on some tracks, but it's not horrifically annoying. Another thing you'll notice about this album is how far back the keyboards are in the mix for this. The guitars are extremely loud by comparison and this album feels like a far more guitar driven release than we seem to usually get from Evilfeast. The keyboards are still there, certainly, but they're also used a lot more sparingly. When they do show up, I think they actually sit a bit better in the mix, because they don't feel nearly as overpowering and instead add a nice blend to the guitar work. Unfortunately, the guitars being this much louder in the mix means the drums got kind of buried in the mix, you can still hear the snare and ride pretty well... but a lot of other aspects of the drums are just gone. Ah well... it's really hard to mix acoustic drums, so clearly he's still experimenting.
Now the thing I would love to hear at this point is a blend of the prior albums with this new faster style. "Funeral Sorcery" sounds a lot meaner compared to the prior Evilfeast releases, even the riffing has taking on a rather drastic viciousness at times compared to the prior albums. However, Grimspirit still manages to craft a really excellent Black Metal atmosphere blending all this material together. It's really another great album from this project.
Old Legend Productions, 2004
Genre: Black Metal
1. Ode to a Rising Fullmoon (Intro)
2. Immerse into Cold Mist
3. Thy Woods are Sacred
4. Towards the Funeral Winternight Landscape
5. Solitude Apotheosis
6. Descending Winds of Holocaust
7. The Black Heavens Open
8. Morbid Rejoice
9. Desolate Fields Left (Outro)
After a really excellent demo, it's great to see Evilfeast get the full-length treatment. After such an excellent demo, it's not too surprising to see a CD release next in line for this project, because I certainly wanted to hear more after the first listen. The booklet is pretty simple, which is fairly common for a first release at this time, but given the fact that Old Legend Production released some really good stuff, I wound up having a lot of the CD's they put out.
"Mysteries of the Nocturnal Forest" picks up where the demo leaves off, but it gets a little more elaborate by comparison. Everything is in that same style we loved before, but Grimspirit has just gotten better at crafting the songs and recording them. It looks like he wrote a lot of material in the 90's and finally built a home recording studio in the early 2000's to record the music he wrote. After two more years of engineering practice he's gotten a little better at it. The recording feels dense though, similar to how Emperor sounded in the early days, which you'd expect with such a large amount of things going on. I think Grimspirit tried to model his guitar tone after "In the Nightside Eclipse" as much as possible. It's not the greatest guitar tone out there, but when the keyboards and drums break and its just the guitar in some sections you can really tell how closely he nailed that "In the Nightside Eclipse" vibe with his material. Granted Grimspirit is not Faust or Trym behind the drum kit, but he might not have been playing drums nearly as long as those guys, but what he does works with his arrangements. Just don't expect any blistering intense speed or elaborate drum lines. Now "Mysteries of the Nocturnal Forest" isn't all Emperor worship, to me this is really a blend of Satyricon and Emperor, just imagine Satyricon with more keyboard work. I mean just listen to the guitar line in "The Black Heavens Open" and listen to how much that sounds like "Dark Medieval Times". The fact that he's been able to blend these two bands together so well and create a style that feels entirely different, meanwhile paying clear homage to these great bands is really wonderful.
So, if you like the idea of "Dark Medieval Times" blended with "In the Nightside Eclipse" then this is certainly a must listen. Sometimes these blended albums give way to a wholly unique sound and that may happen with Evilfeast on future releases, and if that ends up being the case I do wonder how much this album will stand the test of time. I've enjoyed it over the years since it was released, but it's not an album I pull out that often to listen to. However, any time it comes up and I listen to it, I really do enjoy the album, so I guess it has held up well over the years.
Funeral Sound Productions, 2002
Genre: Black Metal
1. Inner Dark Spheres
2. Moribund Chanting
3. Entering the Forest of Old Wisdom
I originally missed out on this demo when it was first released, but I was lucky enough to later track it down. At first I stayed away from this band because their name is just so ridiculous and I assumed the music probably wasn't going to be very good. However, it turns out that Evilfeast play some extremely excellent Black Metal and once I finally got a copy of their music I've been buying up everything I can from the project ever since! This tape is where it all began and it's limited and hand-numbered, but no limitation amount is mentioned. I have #262 and it was released on Grimspirits own record label, which seems to only have two bands, Evilfeast tapes and the Polish band Revenge.
According to the tapes liner notes this music was composed between 1997 and 2002, which is quite a long time to compose three songs. Don't be fooled though, even though there are only three songs, there is still over a half-hour of music to listen to. Once you delve into one song, the demo keeps up that basic feel for the entire listen. "Inner Dark Spheres" begins with a dark keyboard introduction, before blasting us away with fast and intense Black Metal. The music most closely reminds me of Emperor's "In the Nightside Eclipse", but I don't think Grimspirit's keyboard arrangements are nearly as elaborate as Ihsahn's... but few people are. The keyboard arrangements are more akin to Dungeon Synth, which is great, because it adds an interesting feel underneath the blasting Black Metal. The programmed drums give it a bit of a Paysage d'Hiver feel and even a Mysticum feel, because everything is so raw as well. In fact, I would say the music is a bit of a blend between Emperor and Paysage d'Hiver, but you'll hear influences from all over on here. "Moribund Chanting" has a moment that is basically Satyricon worship, so this project has a lot of great moments involved. The demo tends to trend heavier on the Scandinavian side of things with moments from Arcturus and Ulver showing up... there's probably some Dimmu Borgir influence on here, but, frankly, I think Evilfeast sounds a lot better than that and a lot meaner in some of the riffing design. I'm hesitant to call this Symphonic Black Metal, because the music is very clearly guitar driven, like Emperor, rather than more keyboard driven like Dimmu Borgir.
Right now he's clearly playing around with his core influences and I'm interested to see how this project will progress as Evilfeast takes on a more unique sound of its own. Grimspirit is clearly a competent musician and these songs are actually really well done overall, especially for a first demo. After hearing this I'm looking forward to hearing what else Evilfeast might produce in the future!
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