Vonülfsrëich - Ragnarok Rising

VONULFSREICH - Ragnarok Rising (FALLEN TEMPLE - CD 2022)

It’s not the first time when I face the music of Vonülfsrëich from Finland (I already have two or three other CDs from this band in my collection, I think). This time I have a full album in front of me, not another demo or EP, although it wasn’t so obvious in the beginning, since "Ragnarok Rising" contains four tracks only, two of which are quite short. The discrepancy between all four compositions is quite intriguing, actually – if you notice that "The Nightside Voices" lasts for a little over two minutes, while "Dusk Boreal" has over twenty minutes of music. This gives a slightly strange impression, but it does not cause any confusion whatsoever.  

From the beginning to the end Vonülfsrëich adheres to the traditional Scandinavian school of black metal. So, it is obviously cold, grim and damn harsh sounding shit. Someone could say that no one needs another Darkthrone-possessed black metal band and we wouldn’t lose anything if such "Ragnarok Rising" has never been recorded. Well, I dare not to agree with such statement. Not many bands play that sort of black metal nowadays and even fewer do it properly. Vonülfsrëich has already shown on their previous albums that they play a worthy black metal and "Ragnarok Rising" proves that again. Especially on two longer songs, Vonülfsrëich shows some great skills for how diverse and interesting black metal can be, without infecting it with some alien influences. In "Dusk Boreal" there are riffs alike to Tulus, Darkthrone, Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Dodheimsgard or whatever, but everything is so well putted together that it never sounds dull or too repetitive. They use different tempos, riffage styles, there’s even some sort of instrumental interruption in the middle of the song. Sometimes it all sounds like it’s been improvised in the rehearsal room and the band used whatever the tape recorded. Anyways, the music turned out to be very enjoyable, if that word was ever suitable to describe black metal. I can only recommend Vonülfsrëich to you all. 

Verdict: 75/100