Unhallowing “Hours of Reminiscence” | Swedish melodic black metal
A sensational debut album by Swedish melodic black metal project Unhallowing.
Elliott Crafoord is the 19-year-old Swedish songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist behind the one-man melodic black metal project Unhallowing. Crafoord comes from a family that consists of a long line of musicians. He has music in his DNA and it shows in these compositions. Unhallowing’s music is raw and relentless but the song structures are complicated, advanced, varied and hauntingly beautiful. For being a debut album made by one person, this is sensational.
There are echoes here and there of Dissection, Dark Funeral and Bathory. But this is no copycat creation. Crafoord has, undoubtedly, been influenced by earlier Swedish acts. But he has taken those ingredients and created something of his own. Unhallowing, arguably, at times beat a fair bit of those veteran acts’ output.
The eight-track album is solid, but the tracks that quickly emerge as personal favourites are “Eclipsed Winterspell”, “Opening Soliloquy”, “The Moon Trail” and “Night Descends”. “A Blight for the Soul” is a shorter instrumental interlude played on acoustic guitar. It is the album’s “breather”. The album’s title track “Hours of Reminiscence” is another slow, beautiful and haunting instrumental piece performed on electric guitar.
Unhallowing’s debut album mixes face-melting musical mayhem with slower, quieter parts. The dramatic and twisting variations keep the listener hooked. You never know what’s around the corner. What a cracking album this is. I keep playing it over and over again. It is that good. This is an album that should be played loudly in a dark room with your eyes shut.
The quality of the songwriting and the haunting vocals are what stand out the most for me. This is a far better debut album than what many of the black metal genre’s biggest bands did when they debuted. Crafoord is still in his teens. He has created and produced this on his own. What a promising start to what I hope becomes a long musical career in the name of extreme metal.
I hope Elliott Crafoord will recruit a few band members and perform this music live. This music deserves to be performed live. It is too good to “only” be an excellent studio album.
