Throne of the Lunar Soul, by VALDRIN

Throne of the Lunar Soul

by VALDRIN

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KZS It's hard to overstate how good this album is. Favorite track: Neverafter.

Ippocalyptica If you might imagine combining Moonlight Sorcery’s melodic sensibilities with Emperor’s symphonic approach to songwriting and then adding a soupçon of Bal-Sagoth’s over-the-top stylings (WITHOUT the cheesiness), then you would have a solid idea of what to expect on Valdrin’s latest, and best, album. And one thing that Valdrin does a bit better than any of those esteemed bands, if it can be believed, is write riffs that are more direct but just as complex. These musicians are not toying about!

Sid Melodic black metal with its own fantasy world/lore reminiscent to Dark Souls, Elden Ring, or Lord of the Rings.

Excellent musicianship. Plenty of hooks! This album is over 70 minutes and I can listen through it multiple times a day. Favorite track: Sojourner Wolf.

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	1.	Neverafter 06:29
	2.	Golden Walls of Ausadjur 07:51
	3.	Seven Swords (In the Arsenal of Steel) 04:45
	4.	Paladins of Ausadjur 07:41
	5.	Sojourner Wolf 08:07
	6.	The Hierophant 05:20
	7.	Vagrant in the Chamber of Night 05:31
	8.	Holy Matricide 08:32
	9.	Throne of the Lunar Soul 08:54
	10.	Two Carrion Talismans 06:48
	11.	Hymn to the Convergence 03:10

about

BLOOD HARVEST RECORDS is proud to present VALDRIN's highly anticipated fourth album, Throne of the Lunar Soul, on CD, double-LP vinyl, and cassette tape formats.

No longer one of the metal underground's best-kept secrets, VALDRIN began picking up momentum with the 2018 BLOOD HARVEST release of their second album, Two Carrion Talismans - epic, shapeshifting blackened death that was both timeless and fresh - and then eclipsed that achievement two years later with third album Effigy of Nightmares, also released by BLOOD HARVEST, whereby the band dove deeply into the bluish purple depths of '90s melodic black metal. To hear comparisons to Vinterland, Sacramentum, and Sweden's Dawn wasn't mere hyperbole; it was assertive truth, as commanding as VALDRIN's songwriting mastery. Which is to say nothing of the band's ongoing Ausadjur Mythos, a fantastical tale begun with their Beyond the Forest debut album and which forms the lyrical basis of all since.

Now, continuing that tale is VALDRIN's most epic record yet: Throne of the Lunar Soul. At 11 songs in 74 minutes, LP#4 is truly a "double album" in the old-school sense - no fat or extraneous wank, only labyrinthine songs threaded together in a manner most suiting to their Ausadjur Mythos. As founding vocalist/guitarist Carter Hicks explains, "Centuries after the cataclysmic events of Beyond the Forest, Valdrin returns to his homeland, Ausadjur, in a distant realm at the center of the multiverse. There, he awaits judgment for failing in his mission to quell an insurrection of evil in the Orcus underworld, which festered beneath the forlorn planet Earth. However, a strange aura of celebration permeates the air of Ausadjur upon the return of Valdrin and his newly recruited horde, and all does not seem well in the celestial kingdom of balance."

Suitably, VALDRIN here nod to various points of their now-rich past while also pointing the way forward for ever-effervescent splendors that seem so authentically encased in 1997 that they sound impossibly fresher than anything around, "thawed" some 25 years later. With increased emphasis on dynamics as well as dramatic acoustic breaks & embellishments, the quartet leave no stone unturned in their arsenal, but each "stone" is crucial in its placement and serves a vivid purpose, such as the sometimes-subtle/sometimes-overt touch of mystical synth. Of course, VALDRIN can still race and rage with the best of any black and/or death metal band past or present, but even when the slipstreaming spires of sound threaten to become dizzying, the narrative of Throne of the Lunar Soul becomes that much deeper and more intense: not every story has a clear path, nor does it stay at the same pitch and meter. But rarely do stories ever get this grandiose and engaging. VALDRIN possess some strange (or at least elusive) magick, and in Throne of the Lunar Soul have they delivered a modern CLASSIC.

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released November 24, 2023

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Blood Harvest Sweden

Independent Underground Death/Black/Thrash Metal label since 2004. Located in Sweden

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