Stielas Storhett [2006] Vandrer

Here it is, my personal Black Metal album of the year 2006! "Vandrer..." has everything I love about Black Metal. The overall atmosphere is grim and cold, a sound that covers you like a freezing shroud and yet there is often an underlying melancholy, sometimes distant, sometimes close, like a funeral dirge carried by a wailing gale. This is one of the releases that inevitably paints pictures before the mind's eye, pictures of snowcapped mountains, of frozen plains and endless woods in a landscape of unrelenting snow and ice, and everything turning slowly darker as night falls. "Vandrer..." delivers over one hour of Misanthropic Northern Black Metal as it was meant to be, with one of the greatest Black Metal instrumentals I have ever heard ("Nym?ne") and two excellent covers for those who like to let their gaze linger on past monuments of Northern Black Metal while treading new dark paths. (Norghash/Northern Silence)