HULDER is a very recent project, but it’s already making solid ground in the underground. The band launches its debut on January 22, 2021 and first hand we can check what is to come. One of the best kept secrets of underground black metal to date, HULDER was formed in 2018 as Hulder’s only work. Born in Belgium, but currently residing in the United States, she quickly began work on HULDER’s first demo, Ascending the Raven Stone, released during the summer of 2018. Old and regressive, but with no lack of technical details, Ascending the Raven Stone was launched with a rigorous discipline that Hulder would explain and demonstrate with Rehearsal 8/13/18.
The band began to spread, and successive tape edits as well as the compilation De oproeping van middeleeuwse duisternis a year later ensured that HULDER’s momentum was worth considering. Arguably, it was the release of the Embraced by Darkened Mysts EP where Hulder crystallized her aesthetic in both pure sounds and visuals: the colorful cover art featured her in medieval warrior costumes surrounded by dense forest – classically black metal in her composition, sword included – neither emphasizing her femininity nor denying her – she exudes BLACK METAL. Along the way, HULDER caught the ear of IRON BONEHEAD, who first released De oproeping van middeleeuwse duisternis on vinyl and then both demos on digipack CD.
Now in line with IRON BONEHEAD, HULDER makes his boldest statement: Godslastering Hymns of a Forlorn 
Peasantry, the band’s debut album. Just as debut albums should be, Godslastering Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry spans both HULDER’s past and unearths new paths. Within the eight songs that make up the 40-minute disc, Hulder spans a myriad of generations and idioms of black metal, but all deeply rooted in 90s classicism: from the paganisms of the early Enslaved, Ulver, Isvind and Kampfar to courage mesmerizing from Judas Iscariot and Grand Belial’s Key, to the mystical majesty of unnamed Greeks like Zemial and Kawir, and even to the forest wonder of old Opera IX. The point here is that HULDER does not mimic his ancestors, but blends the idiosyncrasies inherent in each in a capitalized BLACK METAL masterclass: dynamic, enveloping, nuanced, and carrier, but undeniably physical in its pulsating visions of darkness and mystery.
Likewise, Godslastering Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry is structured like a true album, with side 1 explored in an all-out ferocious way and culminating in the vicious desire to travel and ending in the hauntingly restrained, quasi-environmental anthem “De Dijle” and, then side 2 tagged with mystical synth and retaining a more triumphant look, with the final magical march of “From Whence an Ancient Evil Once Reigned” sounding not unlike a lost relic of Grieghallen from around 1994. And all this is involved in a rich, robust and well elaborated production; only the rawness of the performances seeps into the sound field, a clear division of HULDER’s beginnings and evolution. The past is alive because the present is dead. With the glorious birth of Godslastering Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry, ALL HAIL MIGHTY HULDER!
RATE: 666
