HELFAHRT, coming of a small town near Munich, Germany, released their first self produced demo CD end of 2005. Initially started as a one man project of Njord, HELFAHRT’s music was intended to base on folkloristic influences and instrumentation, e.g. acoustic guitar, flute and Jew’s harp. Over the years several other musicians entered and left the project and enriched it by Pagan and Black Metal influences. Now, it can not longer be called only a project, but a band with a fixed line up of five members. Also there now are additional influences, the folkloristic component still plays an important role for the band’s general concept.

Aufbruch contains six tracks totaling for 20 minutes play time. Unfortunately the demo comes on a self burned CD-R, which doesn’t give a very good first impression, but he music on the CD-R can compensate that.
After a calm and symphonic keyboard intro, Aufbruch really kicks off with Gehüllt in Verbundenheit.
Speedy and propulsive guitars characterize the beginning of the song, at the end it changes into almost doomy structures and is followed by a short acoustic interlude. The next title For Your Calm again has only sparse folkloristic elements and is pretty fast and harsh. The third actual song comes up with the aforesaid instrumentation, but the instruments are only used for the first part of the track, which continues with really great main theme, you can here some excellent riffing here. After this one,
Aufbruch ends with another acoustic instrumental track.
Altogether, Aufbruch is a convincing demo with astonishing good sound quality and already high grade song structures. Too bad that there are only three complete songs on the CD.
Here and the HELFAHRT reminded me of their Thuringian colleagues Thrudvanger, especially as far as the vocals are concerned.
I am very curious about the upcoming first studio album, which will shortly be released by Northfire Records. It will contain six new songs and additional two of the tracks on Aufbruch. Hopefully the new material will utilize a little more folky elements in the songs themselves instead of “outsourcing” them to the intros and interludes.
Regarding the potential which is shown on the demo, the new album might become a real hit.