Hulder – DE OPROEPING VAN MIDDELEEUWSE DUISTERNIS (2019) CD

HULDER formed in Belgium before relocating to the Pacific Northwest of the United States, launching in 2018 as a one-artist project rooted in the most committed strains of traditional black metal.  De Oproeping Van Middeleeuwse Duisternis collects the band’s first two tape releases: the Ascending the Raven Stone demo and the raw Rehearsal 8/13/18, onto a single document, preserving the earliest chapter of a project that would quickly carve out one of the more singular trajectories in contemporary underground black metal. The demo tracks arrive with the deliberate weight of the nineties Scandinavian and French second-wave firmly in mind: tremolo-picked riffs that carry a medieval chill, atmosphere carved from tape hiss and cold arrangement rather than studio gloss, and a vocal presence that alternates between corrosive howl and eerie restraint. The rehearsal material leans rawer and more spontaneous, capturing a live, unfiltered energy that shows a project already in command of its aesthetic; including a cover of Celtic Frost’s “Into the Crypts of Rays” that locates the key ancestral lineage in a single song. Where the demo proper looks forward toward the debut album, the rehearsal tape looks inward, documenting a moment of instinct rather than construction.  RIYLs: Celtic Frost, Mayhem, Satyricon