Self Released 2011
1.Forgotten By Time 2.Cold In Death
There appears to be a real appreciation of black metal in the UK at the moment, many of the bands hailing from Cumbria and who appear to have a love of harsh, melodic, lo-fi and ultimately kvlt black metal. One of these torch bearers is Ulfarr, a one man misanthropic and bleak black metal outfit, ‘Hellfire’ being the sole creator. ‘Forgotten By Time’ reeks of pure atmosphere, being haunting, devastating, harsh and ice cold in its approach. There’s a definite underlying sense of melody captured in all of the riffing whilst the production remains lo-fi and nasty but allowing the melody to breath and create the atmosphere. Vocally it is as you would expect, harsh screamed black metal shrieks. However, we don’t see the “all too usual” reverb and echo heavy vocals as is so apparent with so many other bands producing this brand of BM. Hellfire resists the temptation to follow that path, opting for a more raw, organic and natural approach which works extremely well and is a welcome change from the norm.
‘Cold In Death’ begins a very sombre affair, atmospheric keyboards back up melodic lead guitars. Not so chilling, rather more atmospheric that anything else. Very repetitive, the riff becoming almost drone like and slowly fading out creating a bleak ending to this two track release. This is a great taste of what’s to come from Ulfarr, albeit only two tracks on offer, it all shows great promise, the (BM) boxes all being ticked for a very mysterious, kvlt band capable of producing some extremely atmospheric, harsh, lo-fi black metal. The follow up to this release promises to be something very special indeed. Well recommended if you can get hold of a copy for as in the tradition of underground BM releases , this comes hand numbered and is limited to 50 copies only….KVLT!
8 out of 10
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