Label: Loudriver Records - SlowDriver Productions
Genre: Black Metal
Length: 45:08
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Finnish black metal has a unique ability to capture the raw, savage essence of the genre's cold nature. It's a powerful, uncompromising style, and today I'm going to talk about one of the best Finnish black metal albums of the year (in my opinion): The Apparition of Horns by Spiritwood. Released a few days ago via Loudriver Records in CD, cassette and digital formats, this opus marks the band's sixth album. Formed in 2013, Spiritwood already have a solid discography that began in 2017 with their debut album Daemonia.
The Apparition of Horns consists of six tracks totalling 45 minutes and 8 seconds. What we find here is black metal in its raw, direct form, with keyboards adding an ominous atmosphere. This particularity is revealed right from the album's opening track, Woodland Meditation. The drums hammer away relentlessly in a primitive, uncompromising style, alternating between fast and slower passages charged with a heavy atmosphere. Saturated guitars dominate the soundscape, backed by an omnipresent bass. As for the vocals, they are beastly and screaming, perfectly embodying the essence of true Finnish black metal. There are a few moments of calm in this chaotic soundscape, such as at 1:12 on the eponymous track The Apparition of Horns, providing a terrifying contrast to the brutal outpouring.
There are a couple of stand-out moments: the power of the vocals at 2:57 on Woodland Meditation, repeated with the same intensity at 5:11, or the guitar melodies hidden behind the savage atmosphere at 2:24 on The Apparition of Horns and at 3:24, after a few seconds of calm, an inhuman scream emerges, adding a striking touch of horror. The heavy atmosphere that unfolds from 4:31 on Harbinger of Scourges is also a highlight of the album. The track The Circle stands out for its powerful start. From the very first notes, the tone is set: a faster composition than the previous ones. This is without doubt my favourite track on the album. I particularly liked the combination of melody (often hidden in the background) and vocals at 1:28, a fusion that persists for several seconds before an instrumental outburst at 2:00.
Ascending Through the Contours of Emptiness is characterised by its evolving structure. The track starts calmly before accelerating in three distinct phases: an initial change at 0:16, followed by a build-up at 0:32. This controlled progression demonstrates Spiritwood's compositional skills. The last track Diagrams of the Dying Multiverse takes us at 3:10 into another dimension, where the atmosphere becomes more transcendental, the song is accentuated by an unleashed, ferocious vocal performance.
The Apparition of Horns is an intense journey to the heart of Finnish black metal, where Spiritwood prove their ability to combine brutality and oppressive atmosphere in one soundscape. Each track is a plunge into darkness, a reminder of the roots of the genre. If you're a fworshipper of pure, uncompromising black metal, this is one of the must-have albums of the year.