Hamferð unveils its third album.
Very discreet in the Death/Doom scene, the Faroese band returns in 2024 with Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk, on Metal Blade Records. Jón Aldará (vocals, Barren Earth, Iotunn), Theodor Kapnas (guitar, Goresquad), Eyðun í Geil Hvannastein (guitar, Goresquad), Esmar Joensen (keyboards), Remi Kofoed Johannesen (drums) and Jenus í Trøðini (bass, Goresquad) spent five years working on this album.
The band stun us from the very first seconds with a pachydermic Ábær mixing suffocating riffs with raw vocal parts, but also knows how to keep us grounded while placing a spark of hope with the clean vocals. The contrast reaches its climax on an intense final that abruptly stops to let Rikin plunge us in turn into a melodious melancholy before becoming much more oppressive. Violence and gentleness compete in this heavy tableau before converging together on the airy Marrusorg, where dissonance reigns as much as tranquility during these softer passages that highlight the clean voice before seeing it cooperate with saturation while the keyboards enchant us. Glæman gets off to a slower start, revealing the ominous sounds that hover around us throughout this soothing composition, before the tone becomes overtly gloomier again with Í hamferð, where overpowering saturation weighs down the riffs. Voices respond and merge to create a transcendent diversity that comes to a sudden end as Fendreygar hypnotizes us with its quiet notes, letting us sink into its darkness until the point of no return, when the instruments act in concert to pin us to the ground, releasing us only to crush us again with Hvølja. The sizzling, jerky riffs redefine the very concept of anguish, leaving us to suffocate, only to let Men Guðs hond er sterk, the eponymous track, allow us to breathe again with a gentle melody and a few words, probably in Icelandic, essential to that mixed feeling of false tranquility.
For those of you who, like me, have made the mistake of not having listened to Hamferð since their last album, Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk will undoubtedly slot into your must-have list of the year, bringing oppression to life more intensely than ever.
95/100
