20 Jan 2017

Stromptha: "Necronirisme"


Embers burning beneath heaps of snow
There is undoubtedly some interest to be garnered just from being from a place as unusual as Greenland, and true, that was the very reason I sought them out. But Greenland with its vast vistas of nothing but ice, snow and barren rock should be as likely a place for cold hearted metal as any! Even so, the question remains if the compositions and execution stands on its own.

Stromptha's soundscapes are in a way self contradictory, but immensely enthralling. A heavy, lonesome guitar track keeps the pace going while intermittent flurries of thinner strings drive the compositions forward with chilling, airy melodies in the background. Far in the back, keyboards send their gushing waves crashing at the shores of Stromptha's heavy handed blackened doom island.

"His contrasting string-play burns like the midnight sun,"

Necronirisme invokes feelings of deep felt melancholia and longed-for solitude. Stromptha's desperate howls are a major part of the picture that is being painted on the EP. His contrasting string-play burns like the midnight sun, with a slow, downplayed heat. The music works best when it is kept in a slow-moving, deliberate pace with room for lethargic, dream-like arpeggios.

The sound of the programmed drums are a bit grating when held up against the otherwise well-written material, and a few rhythms feel out of place in the way that drums programmed by non-drummers often do, but in the grander scheme of the EP these are small complaints. While the title track is rather straight forward, Sublime Drowning Of The Soul is a more adventurous affair in the way that it explores melodies and a more diversified progression.

Stromptha's debut is a promise of great things. With a hand in the murky pits of doom metal and a leg in the grave of black metal, he hand crafts an arctic atmosphere which roams freely like a storm, enveloping a plethora of feelings and currents in its icy embrace.

8/10


Released in 2015 independently

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