Auf heimischen Pfaden

I’m not terribly knowledgeable when it comes to previous Nordreich albums but I was impressed with this one, Auf heimischen Pfaden, and so I write a small review. Undoubtedly there are some National Socialist themes when dealing with this band, but certainly not all the songs are concerned with this subject matter.

Whether you like or dislike the presence of these lyrical themes, it is true to say that the music here is atmospheric, not just extreme for the sake of being extreme. This is clearly black metal, but the vocals are solid and determined, more like the respectable growls of many death metal bands (deep, not raspy or shrieking).

There’s a lot of atmosphere on this album, the keyboards feature a lot, but it’s mostly at the beginning of the tracks. Keyboards in my opinion sound best when paired with proud, plodding rhythms as opposed to overly-fast riffs, and this album tries for the former. There are some fast riffs, but they’re restricted and this makes the song structures a lot more interesting.

The album does not get dull because it has some good variety of expression and you get the feeling that every new track tries to tell of a different tale. What are the songs actually about, then? I do not speak German, but ‘Einklang’ could mean ‘Introduction’, which flows on to ‘Yggdrasil’, which is the giant Ash tree that supports Midgard, the world of men in many of the pagan religions and mythologies. You can hear Skatval (he is the man behind the one-man band) screaming ‘Oden’ occasionally.

I have a done a little research to indicate that the third track, ‘Die Rabenschlacht’ is about the Battle of Ravenna, where one of the commanders was Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. There’s a chance I could be wrong, however. The translations of the other song titles link them to themes of praise for one’s homeland and the greatness of nature.

The album has a powerful sound which has a lot of focus (it does not lack ideas), and for this reason I recommend it.