Runespell - Shores of Náströnd

#FOR FANS OF: Atmospheric Black

Hailing from Australia, Runespell has forged a quite solid career thanks to a very good collection of five albums, all of them very enjoyable. Which is surprising is that, although this project is quite new, as it was just founded back in 2017, Runespell has had time and inspiration to release almost one album per year. The stability of its line-up, consisting of the same three musicians who created Runespell, has obviously been very helpful. It is also noteworthy to highlight that the three members are also involved in other different projects, which makes clear the level of commitment with the music and the scene that these guys have.

Its previous album, entitled 'Verses in Regicide' caught my attention and it was a release that I personally enjoyed quite a lot. So, I was quite curious to see what Runespell could offer us this time, with its newest opus 'Shores of Náströnd', released again under the Iron Bonehead Records' flag. The Australian project plays a sort of black metal with a strong melodic and atmospheric touch. Their compositions have a quite solemn nature, providing an epic feeling that defines Runespell’s sound. Those characteristics are easily found in this newest album which consists of six pieces that will surely make happy the fans who already know this band. The album opener "Mirrors of the Dead" is a fine example of the band’s strongest points. Here, we will find a tasteful work with the guitars along the whole song, which have plenty of great and catchy melodies. After an introduction where the guitars and drums build an increasing feeling of something epic to come, the composition gains in speed and intensity, where the guitars play the main role, although we can hear some keys in the background which increase the majestic atmosphere of the song. The pace is far from being monotonous as it has its ups and downs in the speed and in the overall intensity of the track. The vocals are the classic black metal shrieks which are quite solid. This is actually a great way to open the album and it is probably my favorite track of the whole album. The first half of "Shores of Náströnd" is undoubtedly the finest one as the first three songs show the most memorable melodies and well-accomplished structures. Both "Elemental Fires" and "Spectres of War" have great melodies, excellent tempo-changes which include slow, mid, and fast sections and the aforementioned solemn touch. It is remarkable the nice use of the acoustic guitars here and there than can be enjoyed in "Spectres of War", which is a resource used again in the later part of the album. The longest and homonymous composition also uses the acoustic guitars, for example, as an introduction to the song. Even tough it is the longest track, it is rhythmically less varied than other songs as it generally has a mid-tempo pace during a great part of its length. The riffing uses this tempo to create a sort of hypnotic feeling to captivate the listener. In any case, the band introduces some variations in the intensity close to the end, which I think, it is a right move that enriches the song and makes it less predictable.

All in all, 'Shores of Náströnd' is another remarkably solid effort by the Australian trio Runespell. It doesn’t reach the level of magnificence to be defined as a stellar album. Nevertheless, its melodic black has some moments of greatness, and in general, a very good level which should satisfy the listener who wants to enjoy some black metal full of great melodies and a majestic touch. (Alain González Artola)

(Iron Bonehead Records - 2023)
Score: 80

https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/runespell-shores-of-nastrond

Runespell - Verses in Regicide

#FOR FANS OF: Pagan Black Metal

Runespell is one of those solo projects with an obscure origin. It was founded in Australia some years ago, by a quite active musician known as Nightwolf, who has been an active part of the local black metal scene. He was a member of projects like Drowning the Light or Necrostrigis in the past, among others. Currently, he shares its time between Blood Stronghold and Runespell. The second one is his best-known project, thanks to a quite solid discography and the exposure given by the fact that he signed a early deal with Iron Bonehead Productions, which has released all his albums so far.

Runespell plays pagan black metal with a raw nature, but at the same time strongly melodic. Music’s rawness principally comes from the production as it is far from being over polished. The vocals sound distant and dark, but not buried in the mix, which is maybe one of the most classic characteristics of tradition black metal. The instruments sound well-balanced, and they have a quite natural, if not “warm”, feeling, like if the songs had been played live as they seem not to have excessive adornments in the production and mixing. I think this is a good point as this kind of music sounds more authentic when it doesn´t sound too packed and artificial. Contrary to some other pagan black metal bands, which have a quite more upbeat sound, like a heroic march towards the war, Runespell’s music has a slightly darker approach as it is perfectly depicted in the excellent album cover art. In any case, the melodic touch of the guitar gives to the compositions the expected epic touch for bands that are influenced by medieval times. So, what we can find in this album is a very well achieved balance between darkness and light, perfectly executed in the very interesting five tracks included in 'Verses in Regicide'. We can also listen to two short, beautiful instrumentals songs with a quite strong melancholic and interesting atmosphere, that serve, in the case of the piece "Windswept Burial", to close this quite enjoyable album. The album opener "Structures of Collapse" is one of my favourite tracks, as it creates the appropriate mood to enter the album with a great initial section, that gains in intensity until the rasped vocals and the excellent guitars make a furious appearance. The initial rapid pace is modulated by a quite variable pace with its ups and downs in terms of speed. Nevertheless, the main role is for the excellent riffs with its strongly melodic nature that leads the song all the way through. This melodic excellence is kept in the following song called "Vengeance Reign", which has an opposite evolution in its structure. The first part is a mid-tempo composition with a quite up-beat main melody, until a clear change comes in the second half with a clearly faster approach. Pace-wise, this album has its variations, although Runespell seems to be more comfortable in the mid-tempo sections, where the melodic nature of its compositions can shine in its full glory as we can appreciate, among other fine examples, in the longest composition "Tides of Slidhr". Fortunately, the pace changes are appropriately place here and there to avoid this feeling of be listening to the same song all the time. Apart from that, the energetic nature of the riffs makes the songs to have an extra point of interest regardless of the pace.

In conclusion, Runespell’s 'Verses in Regicide' is a very good album of pagan black metal. The raw production contracts with the strongly melodic nature of the compositions, even though the combination is excellently done and the final result sounds robust and credible. (Alain González Artola)

(Iron Bonehead Productions - 2021)
Score: 80

https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/runespell-verses-in-regicide

Runespell - Order of Vengeance

#FOR FANS OF: Pagan Black, Primordial, Agalloch

Climbing Celtic riffs clamor for control of an ebbing and flowing meter, as though a man with a small spade attempts to tame a river and is repudiated by the tragic incompatibility of his intentions with reality. Yet there is eventually a turn of the tide, forced by an immense will, a slight intervention of deus ex machina, and an ever flowing artistic license that yearns to realize results from recalcitrant ritual. Honoring its name, “Destiny over Discord” overcomes the powerlessness of the poor soul struggling against the tide, breaking its first movement's confinement with a hard pounding and finding space to deviate and move, as though cutting a secondary estuary to alleviate the flow. In small doses, Runespell abandons the Agalloch appeals above its Bathory base in favor of a Primordial persuasion that, in achieving frustrating expectation, illogically disappoints in a feeble attempt to display artistic agency.

When Runespell made its debut with 'Unhallowed Blood Oath', Nightwolf had no shortage of samey riffs and basic black metal to ascribe to his dingy dominion. With a slight handle on harnessing a hollow atmosphere, humidified by raining guitar notes and barely audible blasting moments into his swampy mix, the Australian newcomer's first attempt made for an unimpressive display of down under diligence. Nevertheless, Nightwolf plunges on with his 2018 attempt in 'Order of Vengeance', an equally milquetoast album with an equally vague title that somehow extinguishes the small and distant flicker of hope that once emanated from this bland bedroom. Where 'Unhallowed Blood Oath' had the potential to presage a pivot after an initial display of prowess, 'Order of Vengeance' plods down the same safe path, fearful of the creatures that creep in the bush and unwilling to undertake the struggle to discover a truer aspect within.

“Retribution in Iron” encapsulates everything you need to hear, to understand, and what to expect from this album. The barely audible swinging rear riffs, hallowed harmonies hailing calls to trigger blast beat charges, and a consistent melancholy lending the generic surface meaning to ferocious music leaves the listener conflicted, wondering whether to weep or shriek at this enraging cage. At the forefront are proclamations from a calm but stern vocal, unintelligible at most times but raspy enough to leave a microphone sopping with unbrushed flavor after an hour. Yet there is a second layer of conflict underpinning 'Order of Vengeance', a conflict that leaves this listener wondering whether he even wants to listen to another bland bedroom black metal band such as this after so many years of consistent, cannibalistic, and incestuous music with so little variation and exploration in this well-hidden sub-culture.

Rather than branch out, Runespell's latest attempt is a far more cloistered display of Nightwolf's vision, consistent to a fault, and leaves a listener yearning for the Agalloch worship and flagging idealism of yesteryear. With a dull and dulcet demo sounding mix that betrays the energy of this album by propelling puttering patters rather than a powerful and passionate punch, the effort and black metal zeal is apparent in some places, but is in a quiet place of studious creation rather than the overt, unsettling, vengeful, and brash individual enterprise typical of the style. Turning his sights from the most obvious groups to simulate and instead scratching somewhat beneath the surface of one of the most placid black metal coves, 'Order of Vengeance' maintains an unwavering Primordial focus that eschews epic ambiances in favor of a gait as uninterrupted by diversity, fresh ideas, and originality as a festival featuring an abandoned fifer who knows only one song. While this creates a sound that must make the album grow on the listener in order to be approached with appreciation, with some great riffing in the background of “Claws of Fate” and tremolos abound, the disheartening lack of originality throughout these forty-six minutes serves as a reminder of the talent that serves so many facets of underground metal and the ease with which a passing posing band wagoner may be spotted. 'Order of Vengeance' is replete with two-riff inanities that wash the ears in so many by-the-numbers, beaten down, and uninspiring reels that it shows Nightwolf as a formulaic well-versed musician phoning in his art and attempting to turn trash into cash.

That being said, Runespell has a sound that is steadily growing on me. In spite of its lacking originality, the pinches of nuance and improvement in formula and pacing have shown that Nighwolf has been studying and adapting his songwriting ever so slightly. In spite of the fact that every song on 'Order of Vengeance' sounds either the same as the last or generically repeats just about every old trope in the black book, underpinning many modern mechanics with a modest low-fi aesthetic, the general gist of the album plays things safe and even enough not to offend, let alone imbue itself into memory. This is best shown in the ambient and acoustic “Night's Gate”, where a most familiar string tinkle joins with the sound of distant cars hitting a freeway bump, almost beat for beat an Agalloch piece, but that would be too easy a comparison to draw. This song strips down some of the Balkan fire of Bethroned, quiets the sound of “Autumn I” by Gallowbraid, and leaves this writer scratching his head, ready to embark on a ten hour search for that single exact example of emulation. It's frustrating when a sound so typical and overdone pings so loud that it conjures a dozen responses on the radar, but this is the eternal plight of the bedroom black metal band. In spite of Occam's razor prevailing in finding the near mirror likeness of “Night's Gate” in another woefully average Australian band, Vaiya's endlessly monotonous “:W i n t e r m o o n:”, there is a larger bottleneck of ideas that needs to be addressed.

Struggling with the issues that plague so many, working in the same styled space as countless others, and attempting to force the individuality inspired by black metal out of such a counterintuitively collective culture stagnates musicians and leaves swaths of scorched earth as common and indistinct from each other as a bass guitar is in a lo-fi mix. Runespell is a product of a much larger endemic issue in the black metal underground. A misguided and misdirected hope to stand out with the crowd leaves so many broken and beaten bands by the wayside for the sole reason that they simply are not interesting or unique enough to deserve more than a cursory glance. In a style so stark in its search for solitude, so willing to praise itself for its population of lone wolves, bedroom black metal musicians seem unable to grasp the reality that they are the dime a dozen worldwide distribution of self-parodying sadness spawned from a once proud, cloistered, under-publicized, and passionate sub-culture. The internet has become the new Sunset Strip. Soundcloud, bandcamp, and Facebook are the new nightclubs filled with musicians caked in make-up hoping for a record deal, and there isn't a chick in sight. Runespell is just another here today and gone tomorrow member of a lost generation with nothing to say, further cheapening the idea of bedroom black metal in spite of some examples of fantastic musicians that Nightwolf may well consider his peers.

Eight years ago Runespell would have been one of many in the long list of listenable but impactless bedroom black metal bands, unable to hold a candle to the few stars seen as transcendent in the realm but considered capable enough to deserve its marginal success and a modest following. Eight years ago this DNA flowed through the veins of musicians in Norway, Sweden, and Germany, Croatia and Slovenia, the United States and Canada, Bahrain and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, and most of them are still around today, saturating a musical landscape with an immense elaboration on the particulars of the style. What makes anything by any of the latest in this Australian branch within this last year any different?

As much as this album starts to grow on me, digging in meek tendrils of roots that lose their grip to even a drizzle, Runespell may as well be holding up the background of a mindless low-tier video game with its music rather than strive for the lofty par set by the likes of Final Fantasy's Nobo Uematsu or Command and Conquer's Frank Klepacki. If Koei decided to create an endless series of viking hack and slash games, Runespell could easily provide the soundtrack with a reverential eruption like “Wolf.Axis” and wouldn't offend in the least after a generation of players hears these endless riffs recycling just under the sound of terribly-voiced awfully translated dialogue. Simply put, Runespell is incredibly boring, inert and soulless in its rage, and it seems this has become a common thread with some of these more atmospherically inclined Australian bedroom bands. The lack of ambiance shows how hollow and lacking in ideas these musicians are while the endless repetition shows how one-dimensional, copy and paste, their outlooks can be. Something needs to change. (Five_Nails)

(Iron Bonehead Records - 2018)
Score: 65

https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/runespell-order-of-vengeance

Runespell - Unhallowed Blood Oath

#FOR FANS OF: Black/Doom, Agalloch

Hearkening to those halcyon days of black metal's second wave an economical black and white cover captures a solitary figure with a corpse painted face standing twixt the exposed rootage of ancient and shadowy timbers. Nightwolf's neck cranes and his visage upturns towards the sky as though studying the intricate emblem blazoned in the canopy. Axes, spears, and a sword peek out from behind an ornately embellished shield as starkly slashing typeface accentuates the moniker its pointed protrusions conceal. Runespell is somewhere in this vast visual valance of lo-fi ridiculousness intermixed with individual enterprise. This accumulation of stylo swipes and copious colorless cuts completes the busy banner below as a howling wolf, backed by a distant mountain range, presides over the top. With such an eye for detail and a scandalous show of more is more this presentation can easily come to calamity. However intense and overt, the appearance of this cover comes together as astutely brimming with reference and reverence while the sound behind the image strays into acres of Agalloch aesthetic despite imprisonment in a dusty and dingy Australian bush.

'Unhallowed Blood Oath' has a strong start with “Oblivion Winds”, a rather tepid middle section, and comes back with a vengeance in “White Death's Wings” and “All Thrones Perish”. The beginning and end play very closely to Agalloch's atmosphere and attitude, so much so that they have trouble taking flight to glimpse the extent of their own realms of conquest and instead dance through sure and charted jet streams. “Oblivion Winds” creates a gale of diminishing tremolos that weep over wide landscapes and tear through trees. This opus of an opening then slows down with a piano riff in the background, urging the ivories to wail in synchronicity with guitars before rising into a fiddler's melody.

“Bloodlust & Vengeance” sounds like the soundtrack to a cavalry charge across a windswept plain as shining sabres fell fleeing fodder. On a high sea of grass lowlanders fertilize the soil as claymores sever arms from torsos and carve regiments in twain. The under produced echoing vocals dart out from behind a wall of tremolo that should be far more satisfying to the black metal tuned ear. However authenticity is lacking. The high strung bloodlust contorts into a vengeance that fails to hit the expected blistering, almost atonal, shrieking apex so desired after a downpour of harmonies freezes into the tendrils of a river of blood. These apogees find their thunder in a double bass gallop but the snare and cymbal are immobile sentinels in spite of every attempt made by these guitar gusts to breathe some life into their low-end compliment. For a song as ambitiously titled as “Bloodlust & Vengeance” there is no payoff, no cathartic release, there is only a feel of frustrated fortissississimo.

This is where Nightwolf sticks to what is safe rather than goes out on a limb to personalize his music. The presentation of this album has all the trappings of an individual black metaller. Yet the music follows the flock so stolidly that it cannot even envision the extent of the paddock in which it is confined. “As Old Gates Unfurl” is a replicated experiment in atmosphere with a mixture of acoustic distance and that nearly atonal drawn-out chanting Norse vocal that Agalloch so readily employed throughout its storied career. This momentary peace aims the celestial gaze at you before “Heaven In Blood” makes you digest some Venom. Still, this deepest, darkest descent doesn't do more than try to sound evil with a chorus that indistinctly growls as it stumbles into the most mainstream notions of black metal, employing the stereotype rather than playing the style.

A noticeable change in production occurs when a far lower fidelity announces the shrill guitar harmony of “White Death's Wings”. Each instrument calls to the other from distant peaks atop their howling riffs, aligning the intricate notation through celestial curvature in Celtic concert. Here is where beautality arrives and the album reaches its memorable moments. The fury from before was tepid yet this new concentration of will and power finally brings the personality necessary to propel this album from its most average doldrums.

With its lead guitars trumpeting atop a dim and flickering background of dreary harmony “All Thrones Perish” brings long echoing vocal harmonies to fill the middle range as small guitar licks play in folksy candor to the frantic cadence of black metal's hurry. The combination grows with the addition of another guitar, flourishing with a tertiary tangle that wraps the growing vine to passionately penetrate the earth. These first three minutes harness the emotionally exhausting atmosphere of “As Embers Dress the Sky” and with a name like “All Thrones Perish” this rhythm seems to longingly call out in reverence to the now defunct Agalloch with its bass and percussion combination employed in unmistakable mimicry.

Though Nightwolf finds moments to eloquently call forth the fervent and expressive themes expected in a modern black metal release while simultaneously strolling through his own fiefdom of the Australian bush, the majority of this album is forgettable and bland. 'Unhallowed Blood Oath' plays as though a love letter written by a fan who dipped his toe into the black lake rather than as the result of a black metal musician bringing himself into the fold. With sycophantic and reverential tones that fail to personalize the space, despite a keen knowledge of each ingredient necessary for success, the proximity to Agalloch and gushing worship outweigh the aptitude for exploration needed to make this album anything more than an appetizer before venturing back into the likes of 'Ashes Against the Grain'. Befitting of the album's title, this blood oath need not be honored as another average Australian aimlessly appreciates the already accomplished and aggravatingly avoids anything atypical. (Five_Nails)

(Iron Bonehead Productions - 2017)
Score: 65

https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/runespell-unhallowed-blood-oath