Cold icewinds sweep my weightless body over the bridge to unknown lands. The fog was thick before me as I fell into the unknown realms. The darkness had fallen before me, as I saw my body fall into the ground. I am far away, I am far away from the sun… Beyond All Horizons features shorter reviews dedicated solely to black metal: a new release, an older album (a month, a year, a decade, or perhaps even longer), concluded with a hand-picked track of the week.
This week’s nightside offerings past and present offer a triple dose of my favorite subgenre. Let’s dive into melodic black majesty with the newest exercise in classic coldness from Winter Eternal, a quarter-century old demo from Griffar, and a triumphant track from Indigenous American act Hísemtuks Hími•n.
New & Trve: Winter Eternal – Unveiled Nightsky
Not every melodic black metal release I come across is going to be an album of the year, top-quality barn burner that perfectly exemplifies everything I love most about the subgenre while also expanding it. Sometimes I need to slow down, chill out, and remind myself it is okay. Unveiled Nightsky, the fifth album from Greek (later Scottish) multi-instrumentalist Soulreaper under his moniker of Winter Eternal, is exactly that—perfectly fine melodic black metal that checks all the boxes it should, not overdoing it, but far from boring as well. As “Born of Winter’s Breath” demonstrates right away, Soulreaper is adept at arranging multilayered streams of tremolo chords. Simultaneously ascending and descending, it hits in exactly the way I’ve been addicted to in recent times, best exemplified by Far Away from the Sun and the newer works of Greve. No Gothenburg-styled alternating notes that have been done to death by so many others, no harmonized leads over a slower section that remind everyone that yes, you too have listened to the first two Dissection albums… just pure black metal magic.
Even if it doesn’t exactly innovative, Unveiled Nightsky has one secret ingredient that sets it above its peers in this style of melodic throwback: Soulreaper’s prominent bass playing. As much as I enjoy the instrument, it’s often neglected, even in this subgenre that tends to have more full and clear production than its raw peers. Yet here he does much more than simple root notes, rather dances around the melodic six-strings with harmonies and octave jumps best exemplified in both the intro and bridge of “Nurtured by the Night.” At only 30 minutes, the album doesn’t overstay its welcome either; Soulreaper seems to be attuned to the importance of brevity within such a genre throwback as it exists in 2026, as I can guarantee I wouldn’t enjoy this album as much even if the same quality was stretched past the 45-or-50-minute mark. There are times when all you need is some blast beats and tortured vocals over expertly crafted melodies, and Winter Eternal hits all those marks quite effectively.
Unveiled Nightsky is available now through Hells Headbangers. For more information on Winter Eternal, check out their Facebook and Instagram pages.
Old & Cold: Griffar – Of Witches and Celts
This 2000 self-released demo is probably the most underground release I’ve covered thus far… major kvlt points for this one? Perhaps not, since you can purchase a digital copy. Regardless, thank you to RYM’s “Esoteric” chart function! French band Griffar featured a couple of former members of Season of Mist mainstays Seth, but only ever followed up this demo with a promo in 2006 and their first (and final) full-length Monastery in 2011. Well before the band debuted, Of Witches and Celts featured four tracks — three of which exceed 12 minutes — clocking in at a grand total of 48 minutes. Quite ambitious for a demo!
The extended black metal of Griffar’s first release is raw and relentless: a constant stream of buzzsaw chords laying out melancholic progressions, backed by an equivalently constant stream of blast beats and guttural rasps. As demonstrated by massive opener “A Host in the Toad Candle”, the band also flirts with moments of technicality (at least for black metal) in the form of speedily weaving cascades of trem-picked notes up and down the fretboard. In line with recent obsessions of mine, there aren’t many degrees of separation between these moments and the most frenetic riffs found on Far Away from the Sun. 7:16 and beyond of “Ensnared by the Scarlet Oath” is peak triumphant black metal: not reliant on stomping heavy metal riffs or barely disguised melodeath, but dark, pristine black majesty.
To get into genre semantics for a second (as if I don’t do that normally), Metal Archives and elsewhere describe Griffar as pagan black metal, but aside from a folk-inspired tinge to the melodies of Witches and Celts (11:18 of the opener sounding kinda Soviet, perhaps?), that descriptor couldn’t be further from the truth. No traditional instruments, no acoustic guitar breaks, just blackened venom with an understated melodic quality… not too far removed from the works of a few “controversial” Finnish bands and their many sonic descendants in the raw black metal world today. Split in two parts — the demo’s subsections Chronicle of a Blazing Witchcraft and Celtic Spectre — side A is much stronger simply for featuring the tracks previously mentioned, but side B is not without its own merits. Foreshadowing the evolution their sound would undergo by the time of Monastery, there are some thrashy rhythms and fluid clean guitar breaks on “The Sanctuary of Cursed Warriors” that will no doubt appeal to fellow lovers of At the Heart of Winter-era Immortal. “Under the Sword of the Seventh King” incorporates this riffing into side A’s melodicism to conclude the demo in a blaze of glory.
A release of this caliber is why I started Beyond All Horizons in the first place… for every great new album, there’s some obscure old release (or ten) worthy of a deeper look.
Of Witches and Celts is available digitally through Bandcamp; best of luck finding the original cassette or 2002 CD reissue. For more information on Griffar, check out their (defunct) Facebook page or Encyclopedia Metallum entry.
Twilight Hour: Hísemtuks Hími•n – “Night of the Thunderbird”
Sp’q’n’iʔ (Spokane in the Salish language, meaning “Children of the Sun”) found itself on an edition of Dan’s Cursed Imagery column back in August 2024. Totally fair, as the very questionable anatomy of the “salmon” and inaccurate depiction of (what I presume is) Tahoma in the back sure point to it being AI-generated. But in spite of the visual presentation that would normally stop me from ever pressing play in the first place, this album from Hísemtuks Hími•n is a fun listen that hearkens back to the mid/late ’90s heyday of Swedish melodic black metal… if you can stomach the bell hits of the programmed drums.
“Night of the Thunderbird” is one of the lesser offenders in this regard, but man, that incessant clanging drowns out the rest of the sound in a detrimental way. It’s a self-produced affair to be fair, so I’ll cut sole member Ehli a bit of slack! What I do love about the sound is the soft “ooh”-ing keys — slightly eerie, but in a comforting way that evokes the ancient spiritualism of the natural world for me — and piano lines that complement Gothenburg-style melodic death metal riffs (a positive addition this time around). These alternate with triumphant trem-picked melodies to put together a track that doesn’t quite break any new ground, but is nonetheless very solid and easy to play on repeat. The quality songwriting is already there, so with better production and a 100% human-made presentation, Hísemtuks Hími•n is well on his way to joining the upper ranks of Native American black metal.
Sp’q’n’iʔ is available now through Plague Demon Records. For more information on Hísemtuks Hími•n, check out their Facebook and Instagram pages.
— Colin
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