Myronath – Inferno
5 min read
Band: Myronath
Title: Inferno
Label: Dusktone
Release date: June 21st, 2024
Country: Sweden
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording
… And here are the Swedes Myronath again, this is their third full-length album in less than five years; you could say that they are on fire, and considering how dark and evil their sound is, I would say that they are totally burning in Hell.
For those of you who don’t know the band, let me introduce to you the members that have brought “Inferno” to life… or to death, hahaha… (please read this with an evil laugh):
Hellcommander Vargblod – plays bass and does vocals in a very sick way, he’s an unholy creature himself.
Bjarkan and Bathim – the Lords of 6 strings bringing darkness and frenzy to the party.
Calle Larsson – the annihilator of drums, smasher of the underworld.
(The current drummer in Myronath is Emil Modigh, though. Calle was the session drummer in “Inferno”. So, the credits are his.)
I was expecting to find in this album exactly what I’ve found: some of the purest and devilish Black Metal performances, due to the consistency of drums, the icy and mesmerizing riffs, the sick vocals, the (even if not all the time) pulsating bass lines… Some songs are built of relentless aggression, like “Purity Through Indulgence”, where drums take control right from the start and destroy all traces of sanity in your brain, delivering a brutal work.
Some other songs incorporate a high amount of melodic lines, and even a deep and dark atmosphere, like “The Flaming Tombs of Heresy”, where tremolo riffs flow endlessly cradled by the drums, who adapt their pace to every moment in the song. And the solo near the end is brutal, and perfect, followed by some of the sickest vocals that seem to emerge right from a broken tomb in the dark cemetery at midnight… Ah yes, maybe this track is a gateway to the underworld…
“La Selva Oscura” is a great opener and puts you in the right mood for this album full of evil and darkness. Drums carry the main weight of the song, smashing hard almost all the time, and guitars play relentlessly, cold as ice, pure Black Metal riffs, leaving you craving for more. Vocals are (mostly) savage, raspy, and evil, and still are understandable, and this is a very good point in my opinion, much better than just “uoooorghh raaaaaahhww” all the time. In the last half minute of this song I’m totally mesmerized… Yes, I say to myself every time this one ends, I’m in for a great time!
Let me tell you, I know Calle Larsson because he plays drums in the debut album by Aktiv Dödshjälp “4:48”, from 2007, and his skills there are insane! Pounding mercilessly his kit and making my ears bleed… Wasn’t expecting less from him in Myronath, of course…
What about guitars… the duo formed by Bjarkan (who was already in the previous album released by Myronath, “Djevelkraft”) and Bathim works perfectly. The two men play sinister riffs and some solos that make my heart beat faster. Ahh, they really know how to complement each other. If you listen carefully to “The Voracious Sphere”, you’ll be aware of it. Besides, there’s the perfect drumming, adapting at every moment of this song, and the gruesome vocals by Hellcommander turn this song into a diabolical hymn.
The bass has an awesome vibrating pulse in “Ire Towers”, it totally stands out here, I really love listening to something like this by Hellcommander. This song turns out to be one of the fastest and with less room to breathe in the entire album, I think it can bring some dead to life again. Not only this one, of course, there’s a lot of high speed in “Inferno”, but a thing I really love is that the album is not focused only on this aspect, and some tempo variations are highly appreciated by this Metal addict, yours truly, Sílvia. Listening to “The Three Rings of Fury” I can get nuts of how it starts in a very dynamic way with the main riff getting stuck in my brain along with very complete and rich drumming… and then, slowing down the pace to let Hellcommander do his job at vocals, summoning some demons. And in the middle of the song, a kind of dreamy passage, Black Metal style of course. With the bass doing another standout job… Ahh beautiful!
“Unmasking the Demiurge” has veeeery good vibes for me, there’s a riff bringing to my mind another band I worship… This song is so powerful and relentless, and the fact that the album is heading to its end makes me a bit sad… but there’s still another track, the closing theme, “Apotheosis”, wow you guys couldn’t have come across with a more perfect title, huh? Six minutes and a half of pure insanity unleashed. Drums are being smashed with total accuracy, and that double bass pedal running like a crazy metronome… I mean, maybe it’s 180 bpm and it’s perfectly maintained for more than half a minute, with all those cymbals being smashed, and then the snare suffering the brutal assault… Amazing, I love it! Guitars playing their ultimate dark and evil attack, sometimes perfectly entwined in obsessive riffs and perfectly wrapped by the bass, what a beast in this track too… and well, vocals sound more than menacing with their distinctive aggressive/devilish intonation. What more can I say…?
You may think I’m not totally objective when I’m reviewing albums released by bands I love, and I’ll tell you, I try to do my best. I’m a Metal enthusiast above all, and I’m not praising an album if it doesn’t deserve it as my way of seeing it. I’m not a professional musician and I don’t know about theory, or technical nomenclature, I just talk about things I know: the feelings that music provokes in me, the emotions I find in the songs, my personal thoughts…
The insane artwork was done by Zein Hestnæs, sorry I don’t have any information about this artist, but her work here is really impressive and everytime I zoom in and look at the details, I’m mesmerized…
Hellcommander has always been surrounded by great musicians, and even if the lineup in Myronath has been changing through years and albums, he has picked some of the most skilled guys to bring his particular musical demons alive. Take a listen to their previous releases and you’ll see, I’m in awe of whatever album I listen to, for each of them is full of greatness.
The only thing preventing me from giving this album a 10/10 is the way it ends, the finale in “Apotheosis”… sorry, for me it doesn’t sound like a totally closed album. I mean, the solo is perfect, but the twist it does to end the song (and the album), is not exaaactly what I was expecting. But this is just a tiny detail and my personal point of view. I give it 9,5/10 Sílvia
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9,5/10 Epic Storm
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