My first review for the new website.  Yay!  I wanted to pick something that exemplifies both my love of Black Metal and also pay some kind of musical homage to my new Scandinavian home.  So, with a band and album name like that we’ve checked off both boxes for sure.  Let’s do er.

So, elephant in the room time- I have no idea how to pronounce (or consistently spell) either the band name or the songs, so I’m not gonna be using them much in this review.  I’m assuming they are Scandinavian based on that, but feel free to impale me on the Fields of Scene Loyalty Damnation © if I’m wrong.  You can chalk it up to lack of research but I will do some hand wavery by saying I’m all about the thunder, details be damned.

And man does this have the thunder.  I have never heard of Havukruunu before, and the cover of this one made me assume it’ll be some type of atmospheric take on Black Metal, maybe a bit of folk style.  But I was wrong, as what these guys (Guys? Gals?  Robots?) have brought to the table is a take on Amon Amarth as churned through a Black Metal grinder, spit out the other side, and lovingly snuggled and tucked into bed by the skeleton dude on the front of the newest Satyricon album.

Production has that slightly Lo Fi BM dynamic, but the soaring riffs, killer wailing vokills, awesome song writing bring this together.  The word I would use is galloping, as every song made me want to ride on a horse through downtown Sweden and very politely flip over a few tables.  

I know Viking Death Metal has been done to death (hee hee) the last few years, but Havukruunu bring a nice, tasty flavor to the mix. At the end of the day it’s the songs that matter and these songs are great.  I am now officially pumped to see these guys live once our current apocalypse passes and buy some merch. Will for sure go into my lineup when I want to soar but pretend to wear corpse paint at the same time. Well done, boys.