Swedish five-piece Myhrding’s debut EP is apparently a teaser for up-coming full length ‘A Legacy of Shadows’, which would explain why it feels more like a scattering of floor-crumbs than an hunger-satisfying release-proper.
‘Irrblosset Och Alvan’ kicks things off quite promisingly, employing a folksy, wave-cresting riff that sits somewhere between Kampfar and Falkenbach, albeit becoming momentarily muddled by a slightly odd change in direction as if someone leaned on the rudder lever by mistake. On the plus side though, this rather clunky time-change does serve to emphasise the main riff all the more when the song regains its momentum.
Having set the stage for some stirring Viking metal, it comes as something as a surprise to hear languid and maudlin Dance of December Souls-era Katatonia riffs spilling forth on ‘The Plague’, a song which brilliantly recreates the melancholy Swedes’ distant and ethereal atmosphere of old, these sombre tones expertly weaved around rousing and bombastic Amon Amarth-style gallops and melodies to match.
‘Fight For All Demise’ meanwhile has S.U.I.Z.I.D written all over it, said moribund melodic riffs bolted onto a dirgey and lumbering momentum flecked here and there with the odd bar of sporadic hammering. Up until this point the songs had felt short but largely complete, but by now they are more like fragments; ‘Fight...’ clocks in at a mere 1:57 and is followed by ‘Kampsang’ which is just 1:32 long, consisting of little more than an exhilarating Celtic melody that flickers into life and back out again just as it really starts to get going. Teasing indeed.
Finally we get an early Dimmu cover, namely ‘Alt Lys Er Svunnet Hen’ from Stormblast, but even with this inclusion the EP barely scrapes past the 14 minute mark. It’s a pretty solid and faithful cover however, beefing up the original sound whilst doing a much better job of recreating its undulating rocky grooves, reedy blasting and lethargic meanderings than on the band’s own over-polished and synth-swamped 2006 reworking.
The seemingly unfinished nature of the material lends the CD the impression of a scrubbed-up demo rather than a proper EP, but though an inessential release there’s still more than enough promise here to make the imminent full-length worth watching out for.
http://www.myspace.com/myhrding
