Finally! After slightly more than four years NECROPHOBIC are back with new stuff and present their new album Hrimthursum. For those who think the title is a little strange: In Nordic and German Mythology the Hrimthursar are a part of the history of creation, they are the frost giants residing in Nifelheim.

Hrimthursum starts (at least for NECROPHOBIC) somehow in an unordinary way: A sobbing „Baby Jesus“ which is, according to the song title, being slaughtered right in the beginning, is joined by sinister guitars, female vocals, some kind of choir and finally acoustic guitars.
Make of that whatever you want, after the smooth transition to Blinded By Light, Enlightened By Darkness it’s unmistakable made clear that NECROPHOBIC did not fade a bit regarding force, viciousness and aggressiveness. However, during the almost 60 minutes on Hrimthursum, the Swedes do not just focus on pure speed by hook or by crook; they rather take their time to accurately build up the song structures. E.g. I Strike With Wrath gets by with a rather restrained basic structure without the use of blast beats, what makes the faster parts of the song seem even more intense. Sithra Ahra, which combines with Death Immaculate for the „slow block“, resides completely in even-tempered regions, but nevertheless it’s as ferocious as the faster tracks due to the thunderous and insistent refrain („Chaos! Magic! Fire! Death!“) The other compositions are mostly settled in up tempo range, but in order not to slip into stupid thrashing, they are again and again mixed up by well placed breaks, acoustic- or piano interludes, spoken passages, choirs and solo. Those elements in such a rate are very unfamiliar for earlier NECROPHOBIC, but in this case nothing seems to be affected or only to have an end in itself, nor only to force something inapplicable into the album. Especially Black Hate and the outstanding track Eternal Winter (which is, according to vocalist Tobias, the centerpiece of the whole album), appears as if there were of one piece.

If NECROPHOBIC were actually able to step up after the already phenomenal Bloodhyms was hard to say for me in when I first listened to the new output. One the one hand, the Swedes somehow stuck to their original concept, on the other hand you can find lots of elements on the new CD you can’t easily associate with the habituate sound. After many times of listening to Hrimthursum, I think, the new, modified sound is nothing but a enhancement for their music and just makes it better. I highly recommend buying this release, you get nothing but nearly one hour of high quality material, so there’s no cause for restraint!