Neithan: During my last visit to Norwegian friends we were talking about it: non-Norwegian bands that use Norwegian names and pseudonyms. To most Norwegian musicians this is crazy: after all they use their own mother’s tongue, so why can’t bands from other regions do the same. The chance that you meet someone who speaks Norwegian is smaller than for instance Dutch (five versus sixteen million, count your odds), so why bother. Well, the end of the talk was that most of the time these bands that follow the Norwegian sound often sound boring and the feeling is often that you get stuck with some flawless imitators. Often, but there are exceptions to that rule and the reason why I gave you this intro is because Austrian Stormnatt is such an exception!
Okay, it is far from original, and in matters like these you’d better do what yoy have to do very well to impress the species which is called amateur reviewer. A while ago I had, from the same country, a strong album by Hellsaw (‘Cold’), and this is the second album in a short time from an Austrian band which impresses me. In a way there are some similarities to Hellsaw regarding the roots, yet Stormnatt is more primitive. I would say, put Hellsaw, Satanic Warmaster and Taake in a blender, perform the outcome in an epic mid-tempo pure style and you have a pretty accurate description of what this album has for you. The songs are so simple yet so appealing; another difference with their country mates Hellsaw is that Hellsaw exceeds in sudden changes of the paste, yet the bridges this band has are performed good yet without that many virtuosity, and it does the nature of the songs right.
From the Norwegian bands I also often hear that there is no actual secret for their simple yet good sound, it is all a matter of using good equipment, that’s all: well, probably Stormnatt has done the same and if you see that the album was mastered by Tore Stjerna at Necromorbus studio (from acts like Watain, Corpus Christii and Mörk Gryning) it is probably that Stormnatt recorded it the right way.
No, it is far from original, yet executed raw, simple in a delicious way. I thought it was a saying from the German speaking areas of Europe that one recognizes the master in the limitations: regarding that, Stormnatt are masters. And if the execution is great, who cares about the fact that it might have been some more original? I don’t, this is straight from the black heart!
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