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Well, the first time I heard this band/album was at a friend's house and I just couldn't believe how much I was enjoying it at many levels, but later I dismissed this feeling as a delirious alcohol-induced interpretation. Nevertheless, the thrill's remembrance just kept coming back everytime I encountered any reference to the band so I decided to purchase this piece of work on CD... and several purchases and downloads later I finally realized that I am a VORDR junkie! And fuck me if I'm changing my mind.

So here's the deal: ILDJARN's primitiveness meets a DARKTHRONEish aesthetic and all done within the rawness of the HELLHAMMER old school. It's proto-minimalist, extremely organic, inherently old-school and neckbreaking-catchy.

The production is simply remarkable. This is raw metal that manages to keep it's rawness in spite of a clean production, and this is not that common. It gave me almost the same kind of impression I had when I first heard DARKTHRONE's "Under a Funeral Moon".
The guitars are dirty and thrashy with an old-school vibe like early raw death metal! Not very common but still, this guitar sound would probably fit any post-1994 DARKTHRONE album. I guess this effect must have something to do with the tuning as the higher pitched strings deliver a more conventional raw BM sound. Also, a full fat pounding bass that matches unbelievably well with the guitar sound. The voice is very atypical, hysterical and painful like a sore-throated drunken screamer (non-gendered). I can see how it may dislike some but to me it fits the music like an old glove. The drumming is very organic and effective. Sometimes it produces some atypical patters for the style though very fitting for VORDR.

VORDR themes dwell mostly on 'organic' misanthropic themes (sometimes similar to ILDJARN) in contemplation of elemental forces leaving nothing but hatred and death for humanity. Trusting the titles and the lyrics in adjacent releases (as this CD has no lyrics written) it either transmits a neutral, cold, human-free vision, or a dark, depressive, introspective one... and sometimes an effective admixture of both. All this is aesthetically reinforced by the layout: Grayish, minimal, landscape-oriented and presenting only spartan textual information.

The album starts and ends with some kind of a church (or church-like) choir sing which I fail to see the reason for. The storm in unleashed right in the fist (real) track 'Rhythm of the Storms' which is very similar to the first track from their 'Promo'03', 'Moon of Pain'. It's under one minute, violent, basic and catches you like a high speed train: The moment you get used to it, it's gone! It's not very fair to point out any standout tracks because no track really stands out though the style may vary. Slow paced long tracks like 'Winter Desolation' and 'Veil of Sorrow' may resemble DARKTHRONE and even surprise the listener with a BURZUMish kind of feel. Others like ‘Fury’, 'Under the Roots' or 'The Usurper' are short and very ILDJARN-like but with more variation in riffs and tempo. It just about enough to keep you going 'till the end.

VORDR manages to be both orthodox and unorthodox. It's definitely not your run-of-the-mill BM act but the riffage can also reek of oldness. It's as primordial and violent almost as is moody and inspirational. Truly 'The Seed of the Thundering Wrath'!


(Side note: Comparing this to some other works from VORDR, I find that this album is a tad bolder in terms of composition than the previous Promo'03. Still, the second full-length (II) captures the basic essence of this album and sharpens it further. Otherwise, a very constant band.)