The first song, Himmelsfall, is the kind of track capable of immediately blew up your mind. A furious and energetic track, you will have the most wonderful rapture while listening to it. This album emanates wonderfully – and perfectly – all the astounding principles of pagan metal: the “magical” thing about Mana Ewah can be described as a powerful combination of a genuine rhythmical mathematic baseline with a true to the spirit ideological sonorous proficiency, which resulted in a strong, well designed and sincerely grounded collision of qualities, forged at the gates of perfection. I’m sincerely moved at how all the elements that built this amazing and superbly indescribable masterpiece are perfectly aligned together: guitar lines that holds the structural elements of the songs, perfectly mathematical melodies vibrating in an infallible pattern of bold, beautiful and wonderful harmonies, with an astounding degree of emotional soul into it, purely converging to path of magical folk elements, as well as powerful, rasping, and cutting vocals. Everything easily combined to form one of the most ambitious, significant, brilliant and complete albums in metal history. No, there is nothing on earth like Mana Ewah. It is a sensitive, pure, groundbreaking, innovative, strong and fundamental album. The most perfect definition of a pagan BM sonorous journey, from the four corners of the underground world.
The second song of the album, Verräters Geschick, explains perfectly the defintions I’ve described above. The exhilarating voice – that sometimes enters into a triumphal contrast to more guttural vocals – is backed by wrathful melodic guitar lines, that structures the whole song into a majestic beauty of undefined poetic lucidity. I wish I had never listened to this album: I will certainly get addicted to it, and it gets me frustrated because it is impossible to describe in words what these fantastic musicians have done. Perfect contrasts, perfectly aligned melodies, amazing convergence of rhythms, some rock’n’roll influenced harmonies, the most talented construction of a differentiated “pagan” sonorous element, the correct insertion of folk components into the right places, and songs completely sung in German, makes Mana Ewah the most refined, singular, absolute and definitive masterpiece of the genre, and certainly one of the metal milestones released on this century.
Mana Ewah is certainly an album to hear, buy and believe. Magnificent, energetic, powerful, astounding, vibrating and exhilaratingly delightful, it is not just another album, but a very distinguishable, renowned, high and impeccable work of art. It sets up a new definition for metal, with its surprisingly astounding style of black metal, that blends folk, melodic, pagan and power metal components, masterly inserted into the melodies, which gives them a unique sonorous identity, without the possibility of ever being compared to anyone. Setting up a new and fresh level of creativity into metal, Bifröst proves for once and for all why they can, and should be seen as one of the top metal acts in their home country, as well as their undeniable relevance to the metal community worldwide. Mana Ewah is an album that will persist through the ages, and will become an underground favorite, and a metal classic. Such reverberating, passionate and professional level of competence can never pass unnoticed. This album is an astounding and compelling furious wrath, with an unbound and original artistic legacy.
Certainly, undoubtedly, empirically one of the most magnificent albums that I have ever heard in my entire life, Mana Ewah is a vibrating, creative and unimaginable masterpiece. A unique album, with a strong and genuine proposition, held by an exceedingly unusual path of veracity, truth and authenticity, and a heartbreaking emotional level of bold originality, this album is a groundbreaking achievement not just for Bifröst, but for every one of us, metal fans. Amazingly remarkable, beautiful, emotional, poetic, true to the origins, and surpassing unthinkable degrees of originality, I can only say thank you, Bifröst, for this amazing, awesome, excellent and astounding masterpiece. It brought tears to my eyes, while listening to it. After all, what can I say…? A Pagan Black Metal album entirely in German it is certainly one of the most magnificent things that can happen on Earth!
Wagner