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KHORS
Night Falls Onto The Fronts Of Ours

Candlelight (2015)
Rating: 7.5/10

Ukrainian black metal horde Khors may not be a name familiar with everyone involved within the scene, but this quartet has been churning out top quality noise for a decade now. The Flame Of Eternity’s Decline was the debut platter from the group back in 2005, and now we have reached the sixth chapter in Khors career.

Night Falls Onto The Fronts Of Ours is their first output for three years, and follows on from the slightly disappointing Мудрiсть столiть / Wisdom Of Centuries (2012). Thankfully however, this new eight-track platter is a marked improvement and harkens back to the quality of 2010’s Return To Abandoned.

Previous to this new opus, I had the fortune of hearing the single ‘Шляхом кривавих доріг’ (which translates as ‘Following The Ways Of Blood’) – the track being a masterful exhibition of mystical black metal featuring nice mid-tempo melodies and that’s what can be expected with this new album. Khors has always been a rather harmless black metal troupe, removing themselves from any political conflicts and revelling in ancient traditions and mythical prowess. The vocals of both Helg (guitar) and Jurgis (guitar) have made a nice change from the usual dissonant yaps associated with the genre; both guys offering a chesty approach, and complemented by the sincere drum nods of Khaoth.

And so with this new record, we sort of get more of the same inoffensive catchy black metal. This begins with the unusually titled ‘No Oaths, No Tears, No Knees!’, which in fact is one of the album’s more riotous moments. The track hammers in rather dark fashion, with the duelling vocals battling one another like two mythical serpents; one booming its commands, the other hissing in a spiteful manner. We’re still treated to those catchy melodious passages though, where the guitar evokes images of glistening fjords and dew-damp meadows, even if that’s not what is intended.

The band knows how to lay on the atmospherics too, however; ‘Dead Birds Valley’ is a brooding masterpiece built from moody orchestration and a dark, rolling abyss of black guitars and jabbing drums. When the vocals emerge, the track again pummels as a classy mid-tempo haze. The single ‘Шляхом кривавих доріг (Following The Ways Of Blood)’ comes next; again, it begins with an atmospheric nod before the guitars take over in typical harmonious black metal fashion. The track offers a nice change of pattern halfway through; although it’s not exactly the most ground-breaking atmospheric black metal traipse you’ll hear this year, it remains steady throughout until the tempo rises to an accessible gallop.

Elsewhere, there are a number of standout tracks; ‘1664’ serves up a bristling pace where the drums echo like machine-gun fire before the track shifts into a jarring, pitch-black mid-tempo creepiness. Meanwhile, ‘Slight Web Solitude’ exists as another formidable black metal romp; the vocals this time feeling more harsh and strained as the music rolls out effortlessly behind such tones like a smothering cold ooze.

The closing track, ‘My Cossack Way’, is another mid-tempo march into oblivion – another foot-tapping yet rather standard affair, but proof that the band can at times have a tendency to follow rather formulaic paths. The overall result is that while this new opus is engrossing, there is an air of predictability at times as a majority of the tracks stick to their chosen paths without much wavering.

For those of you who like good, solid mid-tempo black metal though, then this should serve you well.

Neil Arnold

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