Mjölnir - Midgard, erwache! demo 1996

Mjölnir - Midgard, erwache! demo III 1996
1) Ase heißt ewig mein Vater
2) Toten für Wotan
3) Walpurgisfeuer
4) Der große Gott Pan
5) Midgard, erwache!
6) Donar in Trudheim
7) Mein ist der Thron
8) Ich bin der Drache
9) Rückkehr nach Niflheim
10) Elben Macht (Toten für Wotan II)
11) Die Kunde aus ferner Zeit II
12) Endlose Hymne an die Abendröte

Rusfolder / Depositfiles

Today, March 8th, was International Women's Day and I thought it'd be nice to somehow celebrate that. So I thought to myself, "what do women like" and that's easy: raw 90's black metal, especially German, Polish und so weiter. Probably other stuff too but let's not go there. So here's some Deutsch Mjölnir, the third demo "Midgard, erwache!" ripped from my (dubbed) copy and including a scan of the xeroxed cover. Quality should be decent enough, picture and soundwise.

This is a long demo and I mean really long, it's a bit over 90 minutes and that's honestly too much already. If you've heard the band's only album from '98, or the fourth demo "Walpurgisfeuer" (which should be pretty easy to find), you possibly expect something similar here. While the album and the demo are kind of a mixture of raw and symphonic black metal elements this is a much cruder take on the form though easy enough to recognize as the same band. The first song is a long, rather epic piece with clean voices, resembling viking-era Bathory to degree while the second one is faster and more aggressive with militant, lifeless machine gun percussion and generally nsbm-vibe on it. The melodic strumming over the mess creates a bizarre feeling. Third song is somewhere between the first two, combining the slow pace of the first with the raw voice and aesthetic of the second track. Fourth song is the longest of the metal tracks and also combines the elements in similar fashion to the third track.

The three long ambient tracks 6, 9 and 12 were written by Thursenheim whoever he may be and my division of the tracks here differs from the interpretation of the Metal Archives contributor as I ended the title track right where the metal ends and had all the ambient that follows, pauses and all, as "Donar in Trudheim" while they had included part of it as outro to "Midgard, erwache!" and I'm obviously right here. Actually I'd like to revise my earlier statement, as the presence of the long synth tracks breaks the demo into more easily digested parts it doesn't feel too long after all. The tracks are of fitting enough aesthetic and length to warrant the dungeon synth tag for the post, I think. It's easy to write this off as one of those crappy B-division demos but it's quite fascinating and more than that. Give it some (ok, quite a lot) of your time and it might reward you. Or you might end up annoyed at me and having wasted an hour and a half of your life. Choose wisely, I've a nap to take.