Artist: Valdur
Title: Raven God Amongst us
Type: Album
Label: Bloody Mountain Records

Hailing from the very interesting sounding Mammoth Lakes area of California this USBM horde have so far released one album prior to this along with a few splits with the likes of Massemord (Nor) and Lightning Swords Of Death. One of these with Killgasm and Shitestrom was entitled ‘Burning Your Churches to Ash, Fucking Your God Up Her Ass’ and quite honestly any reviewer worth their salt and not restricted by a word count would be totally remiss not at least mentioning that nugget of a title. This is not unadulterated USBM I should add as guitarist and vocalist Thor (yes honestly) is actually from Norway so this lot really have sealed their black metal credentials.

This is quite a diverse listen as it goes although not a hugely long one at around the 37 minute mark. After obligatory stormy intro ‘Wound Fires In The Afterlife’ broods in with rumbling bass, thick and heavy drums and chainsaw laden guitar buzzes. Vocals are thrown out without huge distinction and to be honest the start of the album is nothing really to get that excited about and is nothing you won’t have heard plenty of times before. Things progress with a bit more of a heathen sounding backbone to ‘Great Abyss Unfold’ and the melody behind this is sombre and frostbitten. There is a real raw feeling to this and the material is suited to that unpolished production. One of two Norske named numbers ‘Med Fjell I Horisonten’ really stands out, it has a more acoustic nature musically at first and really reminds of latter day Primordial, cavernous chants lurk in the background here and one really gets the feel of ancient civilisations and a historical yearning for times gone past. I particularly liked penultimate number ‘Vicious Existence’ due to the occult sounding thorny guitars invoking the spirit of old Dissection along with sinister sermonising vocals. As I mentioned this does strike as an album with various ideas about it and at times it works really well, at others I am not so sold. Still this is a band worth keeping an ear on and I will be interested to see what they produce in the future.

http://www.myspace.com/valdurkult