Album Review: Uhrilahja – The Black Circle for #FutureRelics

Band: Uhrilahja
Title: The Black Circle
Label: Morbid Chapel Records
Release date:  January  31st,  2025
Country: Finland
Format reviewed: CD

Album Review: Uhrilahja – The Black Circle for #FutureRelics via Morbid Chapel Records by TKK666

I didn’t know anything about this band until the day I wrote the #ShortOnes CXC article because I already knew the label. But at that point I only listened to the release in passing, which I’m going to write a lot more about now and give my honest opinion.

Deepening my research on the band, I discovered that they’ve been around since 2017, when their first demo “Musta liekki palaa” was released. In 2018, their second demo and their first album “En fördärvad värld” were released by the Polish label Wolfspell Records. The same thing happened in 2020 and until 2025, when the Polish label also released their third album “The Black Circle”.

Now about the album I have in my hands, yes, I have a physical version.

I’ve heard much better releases, but I’ve also heard many releases of lesser quality than this “The Black Circle” album.

My expectations regarding this Finnish band were high, and to be honest, was not exactly the Black Metal I was expecting to hear. I assumed I would hear a rotten and very raw Black Metal, fast and almost non-existent in melody and I found myself…

Well, I found myself with Black Metal mostly mid-tempo and with measured rhythms and leads here and there throughout the album. Interesting, I would say. A voice that fits well with the rhythms created by these Finns and when I realized… My CD player was silent and no more sound came out of my speakers.

Already? Seriously? Is it over already? It can’t be. These were the questions that quickly came to my mind. Wait, has it already been 45 minutes? Nahhhhhh.
Yep, it was true, it had. But it was easy to solve, I pressed the “play” button again and listened to the album again.

I noticed details that had escaped me and I tried to pay more attention to the riffs, the beats of the songs, where the voice was placed, the agonizing screams that came out from time to time, the individual instruments, then song by song, and it was like that until I listened to this album 5 times.

It’s not a mediocre album, but it’s also not an album that you can fall in love with or call magnificent or excellent or spectacular. It works as an album in one, not as a playlist where you listen to one song from one band and then another, etc.

A song can’t show what this band does. Even though the album is simple in its musical construction, and doesn’t manage to create a “hit” or several throughout the album, it manages to do so, an album that is very easy to listen to, without sacrifices, without saturation, without being repetitive. That’s positive. At least in my opinion.

Despite being positive and having liked the album, it still makes me feel like something is missing. Something that would have grabbed me by the “balls”, that would have given me a powerful slap on the “trunk”, that would have hurt my ears.

It was none of that, and as such, the feeling, (despite the album being good in my opinion) that something was missing was present in my being…

As such, I can’t give it more than… 7/10

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7/10: Victory is Possible!
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