Review: Godless North - “Fimbulvetr” (2009)
Although Vancouver, British Columbia is about the last place I’d expect a traditional, pagan-inspired black metal band to come from, Godless North certainly demonstrate that quality black art can come from Western Canada just as easily as from Europe. Having been around since 1996, Godless North is one of Canada’s most respected black metal bands, and Fimbulvetr serves as a compilation of pretty much their entire body of work. Encompassing one full-length album, two splits and the band’s demo, Fimbulvetr release is something of a mixed bag in terms of quality, but two discs worth of icy, raw Canadian black metal from one of the country’s best is hard to pass up.
The band’s 2001 full-length Summon the Age of Supremacy fills up the first disc. While it’s not bad, the riffing and overall approach is probably best described as mediocre. This is raw, aggressive black metal in the vein of Scandinavia’s early bands, but after a few listens it’s hard to find much that ends up being memorable. Fortunately, as the second disc delves deeper into the band’s back-catalog, the quality of the music only seems to only get better.
The four tracks from the Only Human Ashes are Real… split are all pretty decent, and ‘In Mourning for the Night’, while short, is one of Fimbulvetr’s best tracks. Godless North then gives us another gem in the form of a previously unreleased cover of Burzum’s ‘Dunkelheit’, which is easily one of the better Burzum covers I’ve heard from any band. Finally, the five tracks from Godless north’s Dark Rites of Mystic Order demo end the release on a strong note; the extreme production and frenzied simplicity of the music somehow captures the essence of black metal better than everything else on Fimbulvetr.
I normally tend to stay away from retrospective compilations like this one, but Fimbulvetr turned out to be a far cry from the typical collection of sub-par demos and older material that this type of album often ends up being. So while Godless North is perhaps not the best band playing this style of music, the sheer quantity of music and the material on the second disc make this an album worth checking out.
