Walhalla - War Over Nordland demo 1997
1) Battlefield Genesis
2) Black Cross Burning
3) War Over Nordland
RGhost / Yandex
We dig deeper into the back catalogue of unpublished contributions, this is another one by Henri Sorvali and sent already long ago with the various other things, many of which you've seen displayed here at the Coven. As always, master Henu has our gratitude. This is Walhalla of Finland with their late '97 demo "War Over Nordland" which was also released as a 7" vinyl by US The Root of All Evil records in early '98. I think the vinyl is exactly the same as the self-released cassette version and that's one of the main reasons I initially hesitated to post this. So if you have the vinyl itself or a rip you won't really need this version. Unless you prefer slight tape hiss to vinyl crackling and popping? As always with Henri's rips, cover scans are enclosed.
Let's move from my insecurities to the music on this short recording; three songs of black/thrash metal performed by the rather well-known cast of Juha "Agathon" Hintikka, Jussi "Lord" Heikkinen and Tommi "Caesar" Launonen. We featured and discussed the still-active Gloomy Grim here earlier and that's enough about that. Heikkinen plays the guitars, Agathon drums and Launonen bass, vocals duties shared. They play proficiently enough, sure, and songs are quite typical thrash with black metal touches but I can't say I'd like this. Firstly, vocals are again at worst really forced and awkward (except on the last track, whoever is resposible for those performs best here), especially and notoriously Agathon's heavily Finn-accented snarls shine in that department. I've never understood why people actually enjoy his vocal performances. Secondly and the main reason I actually avoided this back in the day is that I'm not really very keen on most black/thrash retro stuff which got kind of popular around '96 or so, though of course a few exceptions exist. So it's not my sack of harvested body parts but perhaps it might tickle the fancy of some disciples out there?
In case you enjoy this, you might be interested in knowing Walhalla released also a split 7" with Macabre Omen in '99 which features just two of these songs again, but M.O.'s part is worthwhile, and an album in '00 where these three songs reappear, re-recorded.
4 kommenttia:
I think these guys were also responsible for the "infamous" Vintersemestre project.
@unholydeath:
It seems highly likely they (or at least some of them) were involved with that! Though Vintersemestre isn't that bad and vox sound better than usual Agathon performances, someone else must've been doing those. :D
Well in Vintersemestre the vocals were done by Caesar Launonen who used to be in both Gloomy Grim and Soulgrind... So the connection is obvious.
@ud:
Oh, so it's Launonen then. I suppose it's him on the last track here with the slightly better performance.
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