Seidr

For Winter Fire

Flenser Records 2011

The beautiful and ethereal, yet crushing doom that pours out from the new album from Kentucky's Seidr drips slowly like dew on a cold spring morning.  Shimmering guitars, possessed of delicate melodies float across my ears as A Vision From Hlidskjalf begins.  Then gravelly vocals and crushing riffs climb to the surface, like plants searching for the sun.  At times I reminded somewhat of a forlorn mix of Turn Loose the Swans era My Dying Bride and more modern Enslaved.  On the Shoulders Of The Gods begins with shrill stabs of dissonance and droning guitars before lethargically grinding forward like a determined glacier.  Fractured melodies creep across the horizon while technical drum fills occasionally explode like sparks of lightning.  Psychedelic clean guitar fornicates with a pulsing bass line as Sweltering gets underway.  The clean guitar becomes more pronounced and delicate as the main riffs lumber into action like angry titans.  Breaking like a quiet morning storm, the track drifts into fragile clean guitar melodies and the samples of falling rain.  Treading across similar emotional territory, In The Ashes is a gentle swaying of acoustic guitar and spiritually down-trodden vocals that lift slightly during the chorus.  However, A Gaze At the Stars lurches once again into crushing doom, both emotionally and musically.  Some of the melodic riffs remind me of Warning while others remind me of the funeral pace and heaviness of Thergothon.  This track is certainly the most charged and depressive of the whole album.  The clean vocals can shatter your heart into a thousand pieces.  After pulling myself back together I am confronted by my views of this album.  If you like your doom with a more nature oriented viewpoint, that echoes with organic solemnity then Seidr will revitalize and soothe your spirit after crushing your body beneath slowly rolling waves of guitar.  Depressive and ambient doom at its finest.