{"id":29643,"date":"2025-07-28T15:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T15:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/29643\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T15:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T15:12:08","slug":"jordfast-blodsdad-och-hor-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/29643\/","title":{"rendered":"Jordf\u00e4st – Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Sweden is a metal country in more ways than one. As I just learned from the promo blurb for Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor, the iron and steel industry has been an integral component of its economy and culture for centuries. Of course, Sweden is not lacking in metal from a musical standpoint either. Jordf\u00e4st is the latest of these purveyors, whose brand of melancholic black metal seeks to honor their country\u2019s long history of metalwork and warfare, mixed with a healthy dose of Norse mythology from the poem \u201cV\u00f6lusp\u00e1\u201d<\/a>. Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor marks Jordf\u00e4st\u2019s third full-length record since its formation in 2017. Time has proved Swedish metal to be extremely high quality, but what about Jordf\u00e4st\u2019s?<\/p>\n

The music may be melancholic, but Jordf\u00e4st gravitates towards the action-packed side of black metal rather than the atmospheric. Guitarist Elis Markskog prefers keen riffs and epic solos over icy tremolo picking and ambient synths, like a more sullen version of Havukruunu. There are more than a few nods to forebear Bathory\u2019s Viking era in the form of pagan folk tunes and deep, resonant male singing (also by Markskog) to complement Olof Bengtsson\u2019s sharp, staccato barks. Jocke Unger, now Jordf\u00e4st\u2019s permanent drummer, buoys up the music even further with aggressive and bouncy rhythms. With a tight runtime of 35 minutes, Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor is both lean and mean.<\/p>\n

\ufeffBlodsd\u00e5d Och Hor by Jordf\u00e4st<\/a><\/p>\n

Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor is quite literally a tale of two halves. Jordf\u00e4st does not break tradition with prior albums in that there are only two songs, each 17 minutes and sectioned into four separate tracks. The first half (\u201cEtt altare av sk\u00e4rvor\u201d) is steely and frigid, a harsh dissonant edge gleaming from the guitars. Jordf\u00e4st adeptly straddles the line between dissonance and melody, like in \u201cEtt altare av sk\u00e4rvor, pt. 3\u201d when clanging chords morph into a sinister, crooked tune. Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor gradually warms up as it progresses through the second half (\u201cDit gudarna tr\u00e4lar \u00e4r\u201d), with more frequent Istapp-style clean singing and technical guitar solos to blast away the frost of the first half. \u201cDit gudarna tr\u00e4lar \u00e4r, pt. 4\u201d culminates with a hearty folk tune that hits like a blazing hearth fire after coming home from a cold mountain trip, a gratifying conclusion to the album. Even though, to my knowledge, no actual folk instruments are present, the Nordic roots are apparent in the robust musical compositions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But, aside from these isolated noteworthy moments, Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor tends to resist memorability as a whole for some reason. On paper, it has many qualities that I value in a record: dynamic songwriting, meaningful melodies, passionate ferocity, and a trim runtime. But maybe that\u2019s part of why it\u2019s not completely grabbing me\u2014like a jack of all trades, Jordf\u00e4st is good at many things, but doesn\u2019t feel quite exceptional in any. Or maybe (perhaps more likely) my taste is simply fickle. It might help if the volume were balanced more evenly between the principal harsh vocals and the clean backing vocals, as the former often feel too loud in the mix while the latter are often too faint. I\u2019d also like to hear more Scandinavian folk influence seep into the guitars. It would likely go a long way to making Jordf\u00e4st stand out amongst their peers in this monochromatic genre we call black metal.<\/p>\n

Jordf\u00e4st strikes a good balance between modernity and centuries of cultural heritage. Their melancholy approach to riffs ought to appeal to a wide variety of listeners; fans of second-wave black metal, dissoblack, and folk should find something here to enjoy. Though there aren\u2019t too many standout moments that really resonate with me, Blodsd\u00e5d Och Hor is nevertheless very solid. I like Jordf\u00e4st\u2019s practice of writing only two long-form songs per album, as it allows for ample development of ideas without blowing up the entire runtime. Make sure to pack winter gear if you choose to embark on this trek because it will be cold!<\/p>\n

Rating: 3.0\/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Black Lion Records<\/a>
Websites: jordfst.bandcamp.com<\/a> | jordfast.net<\/a> | facebook.com\/jordfastband<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: July 25th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sweden is a metal country in more ways than one. As I just learned from the promo blurb…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[975,976,23273,23274,23275,23276,49,48,75,23277,23278,23279,23280,982,341,208,209,985,23281],"class_list":["post-29643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-975","tag-3-0","tag-bathory","tag-black-lion-records","tag-black-metal","tag-blodsdad-och-hor","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-folk-metal","tag-havukruunu","tag-istapp","tag-jordfast","tag-jul25","tag-music","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-swedish-metal","tag-viking-metal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}