| Today, Purity Through Fire sets October 31st as the international release date for Valosta Varjoon‘s striking debut album, Oberpfälzer Wald, on regular jewelcase CD and A5 digipack limited to 100 copies. Cassette tape version to be released by Worship Tapes. Valosta Varjoon formed in 2016 as a solo endeavor of V. V. A first demo was released the following year, but in 2018 was V. V. joined by guitarist Sturmwulf, and thereafter did the Valosta Varjoon aesthetic truly begin to blossom. A split tape with Mexican comrades Viha Surma came in 2018, and then earlier this year, Purity Through Fire delivered the German & Slavonic Heathen Unity split CD, with Valosta Varjoon joined by Czarnobog and Necro Forest. Alas, all these short-length attacks have coalesced into one mighty debut statement with Oberpfälzer Wald. With preternatural ease, Valosta Varjoon here create infinitely stirring & nostalgic sounds from black metal’s glorious 1990s era. Castles, cloaks, swords, snow – all these sensations are evoked, and plenty more, with a sound that’s the epitome of Bavarian Black Metal. Proudly pagan, the eight immediately memorable anthems comprising Oberpfälzer Wald instill a constantly ascending sensation, but subtly so. Valosta Varjoon here prove themselves as masters of texture, their riffing rich with emotion but never overwrought; simply but by no means simple, a hook is introduced and then maximized with a hypnotic hummability, all before seamlessly flowing into the next. It’s a cold ‘n’ majestic magick, and all done with an austere understanding of everything that makes traditional black metal work. Which is to say nothing of the album’s production: a gleaming-yet-ghostly sort of rawness, reverberating with boundless depth and iron-fisted punch alike, each Bathorian lead sparkling and crackling with the night’s most mysterious energies. Stern but ever-knowing, German black metal has lurked on the shadowy periphery for decades, mindfully mining quality over quantity and subtlety over ostentatiousness. Now does a profound new iteration of the Olde arrive with Valosta Varjoon‘s Oberpfälzer Wald! Raise the banners for that arrival with the new track “Die Turmwackler” here: |
| Tracklisting for Valosta Varjoon’s Oberpfälzer Wald 1. Die Turmwackler 2. Kneipenterror 3. Oberpfälzer Wald 4. Glorreich… 5. Der Schwarze Tod 6. Dein Ableben 7. Drunk ‘n’ Roll 8. Der Geliebte Tote MORE INFO: www.facebook.com/valostaV |