Year: 2021
Total Time: 29.17
Label: Season Of Mist

A lot has been written about this huge personality named Gaahl, aka 46-year-old Kristian Eivind Espedal from Bergen, Norway. His contribution to the Black Metal scene, and not only, was really huge, but many of his actions were controversial and badly criticized by many. Some hated him, others loved him. However, here we will judge him for his music, and specifically for the mcd “The Humming Mountain”, which was recently released under the name GAAHLS WYRD, and not for the aforementioned.

The mcd starts with the atmospheric “The Seed” using clean guitar, clean vocals and some epic elements after the middle of the song. In any case, it has an unreasonably long duration . The title track follows, in which the hard guitars, in pure Atmospheric Black Metal style, make their appearance but the vocals remain clean. “The Dwell” and “Awaking Remains-Before Leaving” are definitely the best and the hardest tracks of the album and that’s exactly what I expected from it. At last the harsh vocals make their appearance, in alternation with the clean ones, while the epic elements continue. The album ends with “The Sleep”, which is nothing more than a three minutes cinematic outro that doesn’t offer anything special. On the plus side, the beautiful front cover and the good production.

The band that comes to mind while listening to GAAHLS WYRD is EREB ALTOR. I would expect something more from Gaahl regarding the duration of the record – although he stated that he preferred to make this mcd rather than a full album. In fact, if one considers that some of the tracks were left over from the previous album (because they did not fit its style) and were reworked, then more questions arise about this release and how useful it will be for the band and the fans…

Rating: 6/10
Editor: Dimitris Argyrakis
Related Link: GAALS WYRD – Facebook Page