LIFVSLEDA – EVANGELII HÄROLD LP (Norma Evangelium Diaboli)

Pickings are so painfully thin that it’s back almost a full year we go to locate a release worthy of a little commentary and acknowledgement. Lifvsleda’s third full-length, ‘Evangelii Härold’ is one of those rare recordings that not only stands the test of time but actually seems to get better the more the sands slip away. Well, perhaps it’s got a lot to do with the mediocrity being served up by almost every other band at an increasingly accelerated rate. Honestly, outside of Death Like Mass, Teitanblood and perhaps Black Curse, how many landmark albums have been delivered in that past twelve months?

I’m old enough to remember a time when extraordinary new Black Metal albums surfaced on an almost weekly basis. Now we’re fortunate if we get six in a year. Maybe it’s just as well with the way the absurd economic construct called inflation has been weaponised against us to make our lives even more miserable than they already are…

I’d suggest that ‘Evangelii Härold’ could be the album Lifvsleda really wanted to make from the beginning. For me, this one completely towers over the previous two, which takes some doing, and marks the Swedes out as something very special. The strong Armagedda vibes here are undeniable and the sublime, nasty evil and malevolence of, say, ‘Ond Spiritism’ is channelled with care and devotion. The attack is varied – a lot of it slow- to mid-paced – and the craftwork meticulous. Safe to say the guys were feeling particularly inspired with this one.

While the entire record is consistently great from start to finish, it has a structure or flow to it that places the peak in the middle four tracks, from ‘Evangelii hä​rold’ itself through ‘Griftefärd’, ‘Trämålningen’ and the intensely rapturous ‘Bland likbodar och vintergrafvar’. Play it loud… Use of the native tongue adds to the bleak black mystique and the vinyl edition is sheer quality: excellent sound, with a gatefold jacket and nice booklet included as well as a poster to never post. Something I don’t feel the urge to say too often anymore (and not just because I’m a lazy fucker): a truly great record.

Evilometer: 666/666