I have been absolutely loving this lately. It is some of the most magical, mystical metal I have heard in a long time. It reminds me a lot of Summoning, of course, both drawing on Tolkien as a huge influence. Summoning is one of my favorite bands ever, so it is never a bad thing when another band is influenced by them or sounds similar to them. It reminds me a lot of Lustre too. Every moment of this album sounds like you are in a world of elves – either deep in an enchanted forest, overlooking majestic fjords, preparing for an epic battle, or climbing to a mountain’s peak in a deep, dark winter.

This album is has a heavy, strong atmospheric quality that blankets itself around the listener, producing a thick “wall” of sound that provides very relaxing and unearthly attributes. It is very keyboard-laden, and I'm fully aware the songs are very long and repetitive - I think that's somewhat needed to be atmospheric. it includes many female chants along with black metal-style shrieks that really just blend in with the atmosphere. Many songs are scattered with a few ambient or keyboard-only parts to provide a break from the heaviness and there are also several shorter songs like this too.

Some people say this might be not metal enough, lacking energy, too “fruity”, not innovative enough, ripping off other bands, etc. I don’t care, I love it. These kinds of bands aren’t “trying” to be anything. I'm not saying and I certainly don't think they are the forefathers of some new sub-genre or some new movement. They aren’t trying to be the heaviest band out there, or the most brutal, or even the most innovative – they just are what they are. It is not for everyone and even if it is for you, it requires the right mood and mindset. Check them out if you like Summoning’s sound, or Lustre, Elderwind, Sojourner, or Caladan Brood.

Every song on this album sounds exactly the same. They use exactly the same structure, same instruments and arrangements, and most importantly all of them lack any melody or development throughout whatsoever. I'm not against non-melodic atmospheric music as a genre, I listen to Sunn O))) or Troum on a regular basis. That's not really what I'm talking about. What I mean is that any musical piece needs some kind of storyline to be self-sufficient. Some kind of pressure build-up, some kind of dynamics. Each and every track by Eldamar sounds like someone diddling on a synth over ambient/atmospheric black metal guitar playing a progression of chords. That's pretty much it... 

The lack of variety here is excruciating. The worst part is the annoying plastic cheesy sampled female vocal. You know, the dude just plays synth with vocal "aaah" as a chosen sound, how ridiculous is that?! I mean, for heaven's sake, find a girl who'd agree to sing "aah-aah" for you live. Pay her $100 if you can't convince her otherwise. And really, do you need it so bad on each and every track? From mildly entertaining it gets really annoying after just a couple of tracks, and somewhere towards the middle I had to rage-quit and get back to this album to listen to the rest of it, I just couldn't take it any more.

There seem to be no secret, this album does strongly remind of Lustre. Yeah, if Lustre gets a bit repetitive and boring after a couple of albums, then Eldamar manages to achieve the same after a couple of tracks. Otherwise, yes, there are lots of parallels - same atmospheric sound, same formula of playing some high notes over ambient BM atmosphere. You know, Lustre has those bell-like sounds on the foreground? So, that, plus the aforementioned female synth vocal. 

You know what this random synth diddling sounds like? It sounds like someone learning to play keyboard discovering how fun it is to play alongside a backing track, given the scale. When I was a kid and learned to play keyboard - that is exactly what I did and exactly how I sounded. But you see, I have no talent or skill, and realized it pretty early instead of unleashing more amateurish boredom-inducing music onto the world. Eldamar grew up and released this album instead...

Atmospheric black metal is a genre that can either be excruciatingly dull or unbelievably rewarding- this album is a perfect example of the latter.

This release boasts not only powerful, shrieked vocals, but also heavenly and serene choir vocals that add a whole new dimension to the record. On tracks such as "The Spirit Of The North" we see how the vocals are used to truly encapsulate the listener, sending them into an entirely new world. This, accompanied by the dynamic song structure, creates a not only unique and immersive atmosphere but also a truly interesting sound. Eldamar's debut does not fall into the trap of focusing on creating atmosphere so much that the thought of an intriguing structure is lost, in fact it is quite the opposite. The placement of the vocals allows for the listener to experience a myriad of emotions during a single track. It would have been easy to have placed harsh black metal vocals over the top of every second of this album, but instead the mastermind behind this project chooses wisely where to let the instrumentals do the talking; creating epic crescendos that transform the album. On top of this the choirs are utilized in a mature fashion, often being used to create a ‘calm before the storm’ effect, adding to the build of tracks like "Winter Night".

The instrumentation seeks to build a foundation for this record, with an impressive dichotomy between the pummelling drums and the transcendent synthesizers. Few artists manage to pull this balance off, especially within extreme metal releases. The drum passages manage to be heavy without overwhelming each song, used in tandem with the guitars that have a tone perfectly suited to the rest of the album. Despite the fierce drumming, Eldamar was not afraid to reduce this ferocity for the sake of the story. This can be seen in songs , such as “The Border Of Eldamar”, in which segments of the song are considerably slower allowing for another dimension of the music to be explored. 

As stated, the guitar tone seeks to add to the already well-established atmosphere of the album. Not only do they add to this, but they are also sonically very appealing. The musician behind this release clearly is a talented musician who knows how to write guitar passages, using soaring riffs whilst avoiding having phrases that seem generic, contrived, or forced in any way.

The Force Of The Ancient Land manages to immerse the listener, showcase the musician’s passion and tell a story. The album is interesting throughout and boasts a plethora of successes that one must listen to if they wish to be taken on a truly profound journey.

Eldamar’s The Force of the Ancient Land is a slab of atmospheric black metal that’s frustrating in how strongly composed it is yet how dull it becomes. This album aims to be a meditative, calming experience but ends up being intermittently sleep-inducing. With energy and variety of ideas all sorely lacking, even by the standards of ambient metal, a style that is not (and should not be) loaded with flashy playing or diverse musical elements, this release throws every trick it has at you too early. From there, it has no other concepts or techniques to turn to, and instead devolves into the sort of atmosphere you barely notice.

Things start out well with opening track 'Spirit of the North'. The way the black metal riffing, which alternates between slow, droning streams of power chords and faster, blastbeat-laden passages, is shoved slightly into the background while soft, spacy keyboard patterns dance in the front is certainly appealing. The song's chorus features a gorgeous, wordless melody delivered by a female voice that sounds like it's echoing forth from some far-off forest. Occasionally, band mastermind Mathias Hemmingby will let out a long, heartfelt shout that adds quite a bit to the emotional quality. The song's structuring is great too because every time a long stretch of instrumental ambience threatens to get boring, that awesome chorus swoops in like Superman to save the day. A worthwhile track that never feels stretched out, despite its length. 

The main problem here is that 'Spirit of the North' is too representative of what the rest of the album is about. The seven songs that follow are practically carbon copies of it. They use the exact same techniques in more or less the exact same way every time. There's no moment in the album past the first song that would result in anyone saying, “oh, that's new.” or “oh, that's an interesting stylistic choice.” The only real differences are the lengths of the tracks and how they're structured. Actually, now that I think about it, some of these compositions are probably more dependent on the female vocals or tinkly keys than others but not to the point where anyone listening would notice. 

Clocking in at almost an hour and 20 minutes in length, there's nowhere near enough diversity on The Force of the Ancient Land to keep it interesting the whole time. There are just too few ideas ambling about in too large a space. You get keyboard-driven ambience over simplistic black metal riffing with a few variations here and there but that's about it. While each song is structured effectively and made up of appealing sections, everything is too similar to keep the album from eventually becoming a long stream of blandness. This is effective music if you’d like some atmosphere to transport you to another world while you're reading or ingesting 'shrooms in the woods but if you want anything else out of the album, I can't recommend listening to more than a couple of its songs at a time.

If there's one quality (in music, movies, literature...any artistic endeavor, really) that I often find that others place a lot of value in, yet which I struggle to hold in the same regard, it's originality. As a matter of fact, it's not at all a rare occurrence that originality is not only considered a praiseworthy element of an artwork, but something of the very highest praise, something that, even if it's the sole redeeming factor in an otherwise completely shoddy work, some credit is due. On the contrary, I believe that at best originality paves the way toward enjoyment simply because the possibility exists that some emotional response might possibly be yanked forth from our psyches that might not have otherwise ever come about before exposure to the ostensibly original work. But given that it's nearly impossible for us to know with any certainty whether any given work has been done before, who's to say whether some other piece of art might've brought forth the same response? 

Anyway, the whole reason for that silly introduction is that it applies quite strongly in the realm of worship music. No, I don't mean songs praising your imaginary sky friends, I mean music crafted in the image of some band held in high esteem by whoever's behind the worship. Make no bones about it, Eldamar is Lustre worship through and through. It's got the same ponderous, glacial pace, the same slowly shifting chord progressions that serve as minimalist riffs, the same starry melancholy in those deep, sonorous space-xylophone synth leads that often serve as the melodic main course in any given Lustre track. So yes, like Lustre, on some level this all goes back to Burzum, to the marriage of the repetitious and minimalist black metal of the two immediate pre-prison albums with the dungeons-in-the-heavens synthesizer ruminations of the ambient tracks on those same works. 

But...this is Lustre worship, so it's yet a step removed further still. Lustre, even its darkest moments, is always a shade or two brighter than the desiccated corpse nihilism and hopelessness that marked those Burzum works, and Eldamar take things another degree or two brighter. The melodies still have some sadness to them, but it's merely sadness and not the hateful emptiness of total depression. There's more overt beauty, helped in no small part by the replacement of one of the swollen backing synth layers with wordless forest-faerie female vocals that play a sharp counterpoint to the indecipherable reptilian croaks that serve as the main vocals (and which, indeed, are a spittin' image of Nachtzeit's own in Lustre). 

"But clearly human-origin, beautiful female vocals would be completely out of place in the inhuman, inorganic stardust that Lustre worship ought to be!" you might be shouting at your monitor this very instant, the hem of your dusk-grey cloak clutch in your shaking fist. Well, I might agree with you were it not for the other more organic touches that prevent this from being a hollow bit of musical forgery. The drums here are mixed much closer to the front than Nachtzeit ever dares, with a more varied drum performance featuring more cymbal touches, fills, rolling double bass and even slow-motion blastbeats from time to time. The guitars are less a hazy ambient fuzz and more clearly actual stringed instruments played by people, separated far enough out to the sides that the bass guitar actually holds its own down the center of the mix. The guitars themselves sometimes venture away from the plodding chords you'd expect to explore more lively tremolo patterns (well, lively in this context anyway). All of these elements work together quite nicely to paint a more crisp picture of how, exactly, this Mathias Hemmingby fellow has let his own creative juices (as well as other musical influences, no doubt) creep into his compositions, performances and recordings on this album.

I actually did hear someone describe this album as being very Summoning-ish before I ever heard it, and while I think that influence is a bit overstated, it's hinted at quite a bit here and there and is painted on much thicker when you take a look outside the music itself and consider the project's name itself as well as the album and song titles (if only the same could be said of the artwork; that original cover image was pretty miserable, but there was fortunately an updated cover image that's considerably better if still a bit dull). That said, I think it is a fair comparison to say that Eldamar are sort of the Caladan Brood to Lustre's Summoning. The worship element is central and vital to the project's purpose, sound and spirit, but the added organic elements, strong grasp of the songwriting that made what they're worshiping worth giving a stab at themselves, and the, dare I say, unique influences from elsewhere help to shape this into something that's worth listening to on its own merits. 

It wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to make a Lustre clone band. Shit, give me a couple hours and I could bash out an album of the stuff myself. Eldamar, though, has not only done an extraordinary job of doing their inspiration justice, the project has set a really high bar for itself and for this mini-genre. They've nailed the sound, the importance of the repetition, and folded in some dynamics and song progression that's done tastefully and subtly but in a way that I feel adds a lot to the slow-moving songs (which are arranged in a carefully flowing track order that has an artistry of its own). Obviously this release is highly recommended to people who like Lustre even half as much as I do, but equally recommended both to folks who are into the recent wave of "space black metal" bands (as this album shares a lot in common with bands like Midnight Odyssey, Aureole or Sun of the Blind) as well as folks really into stuff like Summoning or Caladan Brood but wouldn't mind hearing a more celestial and less dungeon-synth take on keyboard-heavy, repetition driven fantasy realm black metal.