With calmer and beautifully adorned melodies, Heathen Spring, like a lot of other albums in the genre – except for the vocals – doesn’t seem a black metal record at all, even if you labeled it atmospheric, despite the serene and soft vibration that encircles the work. With its instrumental passages reminiscent of a dark and laboriously worked alternative/ gothic rock, I think that the correct thing to reiterate about Herrwulf’s work is the fact that his style is an experimental grace, infatuated with intuitive influences from a lot of other genres, although ambient music plays a pivotal role in his magnanimous artistry.
You may not find this work – at first, at least – too daring, groundbreaking or innovative, but undoubtedly, there is a genuine quest for something new here, as the artist clearly has developed a style of his own in the work. With poignantly intense and precise razor blade guitar lines, that paradoxically can be felt as profoundly soft as well, Heathen Spring has seven amazingly conceived tracks, that brings fresh new elements to the genre, as a whole.
With a unique understanding of his genre of choice, Herrwulf has conceived a beautiful and interesting work of art, upon which he has engraved progressive and subtle evolutionary scales into the musical mosaic of his gracious creation, that are vibrant throughout the elemental soul of his style, all the way throughout the work. With a peculiarly dense, but marvelous vision of sentimental objectivity, Heathen Spring seems to develop a new sonorous feature, that will shape a classic sonorous distinction to the genre. This becomes clear throughout the album’s splendorous journey, and only a great, audacious and exponentially creative artist will have the strength, the bravery and the overall talent to do that!
Wagner