A split release of pagan ambient music courtesty of Austria's Uruk-Hai, and folk tinged viking black metal courtesy of Italian metal project Skoll. Playing a mixture of folk metal with ambient black metal twists, Skoll leap out of the blocks on this split release with three lengthy songs. Uruk-Hai presents ambient tracks in their recognisable style, some with ethereal female vocals and choral parts. Ltd x 500 copies in a digipak.
In an elegant digipack edition, limited to 500 copies (for those who still—fortunately—believe that music can also benefit from physical media), this interesting split is released under the aegis of the ever-active Aphelion Productions, pitting two stylistically distant yet conceptually similar bands against each other. Opening the show are our own Skoll, who, in my opinion, win hands down compared to their fellow releases: our guys offer three songs of pagan black metal, combining the genre's typical epicness with a mysterious atmosphere, capable of evoking traditions and rituals now buried by the sands of time, without neglecting a certain aggressive edge, at times more evident (as is the case with "In The Mist I Saw," a song that shares the title with the band's first demo, released way back in 1996). Aside from the old Falkenbachs, the main compositional reference remains Bathory from the “Blood Fire Death” / “Hammerheart” / “Twlight Of The Gods” period, a triptych that marked the birth and dictated the canons of pagan/Viking metal as we know it today. M., mastermind of Skoll, has never hidden his visceral admiration for Quorthon and his creation, who are respectfully and dutifully paid homage in this work. Weaker and less inspired than usual, however, was the contribution of Uruk-Hai: an Austrian one-man band behind which hides the factotum Alexander “Hugin” Wieser, who over the years has churned out an incredible amount of works (over ninety – yes, you read that right – between albums, demos and splits!!!), with inevitable qualitative peaks and valleys. In this instance, our dark ambient fantasy, inspired by the world and characters of the (very Catholic) J.R.R. Tolkien, is embodied in very linear compositions, built on elementary synth lines, over which are grafted a few percussive variations, some acoustic arpeggios, and sporadic vocals (“Reiter Theodens”). Halfway between Summoning and certain works by Mortiis (at least in intention), these songs are rather flat and lack the ancestral charm that characterized a work like “A Night in the Forest,” perhaps the best, and also the most well-known, of the Uruk-Hai project. All things considered, “Through The Mountains Mist They Came” is an enjoyable album and, despite its ups and downs, it will engage a wide range of listeners.
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=PWXaJuDS0bo&t=52s
