I am a regular customer with probably the best Black metal mail order service in the USA these days hell’s headbangers and am always sure to check their out next releases tab since many times they will have something listed on there that if you do not preorder you have no chance to get a copy for yourself without paying “discog insanity prices”
Beginning of this summer I saw that they had Finnish Black Metal mavericks Forgjord’s 2017 release Uhripuu listed for preorder on vinyl. Werewolf records can do no wrong in my book in recent years so I checked a couple of advance tracks on their bandcamp link and whipped out the ol’ credit card to presave my copy
Fast forward a couple of months and my order finally shows up – of course by then I had totally forgotten about this release and couldn’t wait to throw it on the turntable and crank it up.
So I put on Side A as I firmly believe that when a band does an album they want their songs heard in a particular order and have probably spent some time with the tracks to come up with the best possible order. Something that of course is lost by streaming usually if you hit up a bands Spotify page they play the most popular songs first regardless of which album they come from.
The needle drops on the grooves and I gotta say for the first part of the first song “Johdanto” I was pretty underwhelmed, I honestly wondered “shit maybe the tracks I checked out were from a different release?” and ‘what was I thinking ordering this”
I was like well you know what you paid your money just have faith and let the album play through,2nd song kicks ok a bit more up beat but still not outstanding…..I dunno what happened but half way through the song “Uhripuu” boom I am HOOKED
One thing I really love about the Finnish black metal bands is not only do they have rawness and intensity there is a sense of melody there that is much more prevalent than you find in the average Norwegian or Swedish BM band
Guys this is an essential purchase – do not hesitate to pick upa copy in your favorite format as you are gonna get a lot of play from this album.
My understanding is their latest album “Laulu kuolemasta” is out now on CD and Digital album but the vinyl is yet to come
A little back story on the band they formed in Finland in 2002 released a bunch of demos and this is their 3rd full length release (they have 2 more full length albums out after this one)
Forgjord is Swedish for “destroyed”
Thanks for reading
Steve BDL August 2020
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