Velm: Földek (2013)

Some time ago I reviewed a split album between Hungarian black metal bands De Profundis and Velm.  Based on the genre descriptions, I assumed I would probably prefer De Profundis, but ended up finding myself much more taken with the music of the pagan black metal band Velm.  I recently found a seller that was selling both of Velm's full-length albums and jumped on them.

I had a pretty good idea of what to expect with Velm based on the split, which was really just a way to package demos from both bands together, so it was much more like two real releases than just a song by each band.  The full-length reinforced what I believed a full-length from Velm would be like. 

The first three songs of the album is mostly melodic, synth-driven pagan black metal.  Featuring lengthy passages and wandering riffs, with vampiric vocals, the music can be harsh, but is often beautiful at the same time.  The last three songs are instrumentals, primarily played by the keyboards and are more ambient in nature.  The best moments on the album though are the parts of the first three songs that combine the two disparate sounds, bringing black metal riffing together with the keyboards. 

Overall, I was fairly impressed with this release.  Velm does not reinvent the wheel here, and they sound like many other bands in the genre, but the music is competent.  As I said, the best moments are those when they bring their different sounds together.  If they could make an entire album of that, that would really be something.