The long-awaited debut album from Icelandic/US Black Metal ensemble MARTRÖÐ is a deep, disturbing and cataclysmic work which channels twisted primal impulses into the psychedelic beyond.
Following up sole previous release, 2016's lauded "Transmutation of Wounds" EP, the band's inaugural full length "Draumsýnir Eldsins" ('Dream Visions of the Fire') blazes through four transcendent, maniacal tracks that revel in organised chaos and infernal surrealism, as swarming Black Metal bludgeon meets avant-Classical and psychotropic noise.
The core band, comprising members of WORMLUST, CHAOS MOON, SKÁPHE et al, and a cast of contributors have produced a fevered maelstrom of transformative proportions: waves of percussive supremacy propel orchestrated arrangements of event-horizon riffage and unhinged vocals, revolving into dimensions where the mind turns in on itself.
In the words of MARTRÖÐ:
""Draumsýnir Eldsins" is a rite of vision, built around the structure of the medieval literary device "dream vision", where sleep becomes the gateway to veiled knowledge. Sleep is not rest; it is a passage. Dreams are ritual space, a sacred current connecting the human mind to cosmic forces. What unfolds is symbolic truth seen through veils of nightmare and trance. Each lyric functions like a sigil or a visionary mirror, invoking a symbolic feedback loop of creation and collapse, presence and absence, silence and revelation."
Recommended if you like: BLUT AUS NORD, LEVIATHAN, DEATHSPELL OMEGA, EMPEROR