GRAVELAND „Immortal Pride”

One sentence review: If you enjoy Viking era Bathory and especially ‘Hammerheart’ and ‘Twilight Of The Gods’ you MUST get this record!

Ok, now for those unfortunate souls who are not familiar with the aforementioned records by Quorthon; ‘Immortal Pride’ is an epic folk/pagan record which despite only containing four tracks still clocks in at around 50 minutes. This may lead the sceptics to be worried of the record getting boring at times. They could not be farther from the truth. Every note, every riff and every synth part play their own important part in making this a truly epic record. Rob Darken can easily be considered as one of the forefathers of the folk/pagan metal genres. Over the years he managed to hone his craft to allow him to release anguished soundscapes mourning his fallen Slavic forefathers in the countless battles they fought.

Yes, Darken builds strongly on his Slavic and specifically Polish heritage and glorifies what he calls ‘White Warriors’. Whether or not you support his political stance, which undeniably gathers him many enemies, you cannot deny the fact that he manages to recreate the medieval atmosphere of the land of his forefathers through his music. That atmosphere and earnest admiration for his predecessors is what endears his music to many including myself. It is as if Sventevith himself is speaking through Darken and I cannot help but visualize images of the 19th century novel ‘Stara Basn’ (Ancient Tale) by Jozef Igancy Kraszewski or the historically more recent exploits of Sienkiewicz’s ‘Trilogy’.

Darken takes care of all the instruments other than the drums on this record. The skins are manned by Capricornus who in my view has significantly improved his skills over the years. I have not really owned a lot of original material by Graveland prior to hearing this record but did of course check out a lot of his stuff through the internet. None of it gripped me as strong as did this record.

To sum it up: hate, atmosphere, historic relevance, integrity, heritage are keywords that sum up this record musically and ideologically. Even though Graveland will probably never achieve the popularity of one Quorthon and Bathory, this record beats the Swede at what he does best. As history has taught us the Poles have beaten Swedish attacks on more than one occasion and they succeed here as well. 😉

No Graveland record would be complete without a personal message from Darken: “Christian butchers that today are adored as saints murdered my ancestors that full of immortal pride did not want to accept strange faith”

note: 10/10