#vindsval

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry (October 10th, 2014)

Forhist | S/T | 26th February, 2021

French Atmospheric Black Metal

From Blut Aus Nord mastermind, Vindsval.

forhist [france] // old school black metal.

Blut Aus Nord

1997

In the labyrinthine corridors of French black metal, where shadows have learned to speak in tongues of distortion and beauty, Blut Aus Nord emerges from three decades of restless evolution with Ethereal Horizons—their sixteenth offering to the void. Under the watchful eye of Vindsval, the architect of avant-garde darkness who had already carved two classics into the stone of eternity before his twentieth year, this collective has never ceased its metamorphosis.

Where once they crashed headfirst into industrial wastelands and trip-hop territories with the 777 trilogy, where the Disharmonium diptych thrummed with Lovecraftian oddness that defied comprehension, Ethereal Horizons finds the band in a different state of being. This is not the sound of aliens transmitting from distant galaxies—this is the sound of souls learning to rest within their own skin.

Ethereal Horizons by Blut Aus Nord

The album unfolds like a meditation written in starlight. Clean vocals drift through ultra-melodic guitar lines while song structures breathe with the patience of ancient trees. Where the cosmic psychedelia of Hallucinogen once gazed outward toward solar systems unknown, Ethereal Horizons turns its telescope inward, exploring the infinite spaces within the human heart.

"Shadows Breathe First" opens the ceremony, while "The Fall Opens the Sky" and "The Ordeal" flirt with modern blackgaze territories, proving that Vindsval and his longtime collaborators—bassist GhÖst and drummer/keyboardist W.D. Feld—can master any expression of darkness they choose to inhabit.

But it is "The End Becomes Grace" that serves as the album's true revelation—a twelve-minute masterclass in tension and release that closes Ethereal Horizons like a prayer whispered at the edge of dawn. The track begins as an ever-ascending atmospheric black metal workout, with Vindsval's riffs scaling mountains of melody reminiscent of Windir or Summoning, carried by persistent drumbeats that pulse like a second heartbeat.

Then, in a moment of divine intervention, everything falls away except for an icy bed of synthesizers. The silence stretches, pregnant with possibility, until the guitar reemerges—not as a weapon of war, but as a subdued, jazz-inspired meditation that recalls Mikael Åkerfeldt's clean passages on Opeth's Damnation. The full band returns for another round of atmospheric stargazing, punctuated by moments of hard-charging riffage, before the song dissolves into an extended New Age synthesis that may be the most meditative thing Blut Aus Nord has ever committed to the eternal record.

This is what middle-aged black metal can sound like when it stops running from its own reflection. Ethereal Horizons is probably the most strictly beautiful album in the Blut Aus Nord catalog, the most accessible gateway into their labyrinth of sound. Yet knowing Vindsval's restless spirit, this moment of grace will likely be followed by another skronking, dissonant curveball that pushes the very limits of what ears can endure.