Finnish black metal is living a period of vast popularity, within extreme metal environment: not only there are a lot of valid projects popping out quite every moment directly from Finland, but even other countries are dealing with that kind of style: raw, epic and melodic in nature. It's a little bit hard for me to define when exactly this peculiar way of playing starts: first movers in that geographical scene, such as Horna, Thyrane, Thy Serpent or Behexen were not really into that particular style, so I'm assuming that maybe it had originated from the very first efforts of Satanic Warmaster or Sargeist. Even with a very bare bone productions, often drowned in the muddy swamp of analogic lo-fi, the melodic phrasing is so well written that emerges from the worst sound quality.
Melody is the key word: simple, minimalistic sequences of notes, but well conceived, with a thoughtful approach to composition. The solo project Vultyrium, held by mastermind The Vultyrian, fully falls into this category! Epic black metal, filled with the right amount of harshness but never forgetting the sense and the good taste for memorable riffs. Maybe, not as good as some tracks from the colleague Satanic Warmaster, and sometimes a little bit stuck in way too many loops or reiterations, but we are not new to black metal, so this is part of the game from the very beginning. All of the four songs are extended in structure, always retaining their unsophisticated shape: the whole release lasts half a hour, meaning that you can enjoy every second of it without losing focus or listening stamina!
The sound quality is, of course, very crude: treble frequencies are located in the first line, with high-pitched screaming vocals, a little bit too edgy, but not a harmless parody like some other vocalists! A mention for the wonderful artwork: a shot taken in the woods, with the musician in a barbaric fashion wearing face-painting and spikes. Straight and authentic, with that old-school, red colored a-symmetrical logo: all the right stuff to catch the attention of the nostalgic black metalheads! I'm fearing that, with all the good issues related to this interpretation of the genre, in a short while we could reach an inflated saturation, not so different from what happened to the Norwegian template applied everywhere in the early 2000's. Maybe this could represent an issue when the wide-spreading of this style will lead to a decrease in quality, but this is not yet the case!
Sample:
youtube.com/watch?v=TTlPq-Larkw&list=RDTTlPq-Larkw&start_radio=1
