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FIDES INVERSA strike with their second album, Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans. Classicist yet paying no lip service to tradition, FIDES INVERSA invested their very souls in the creation of this second opus: exhaustive spiritual research and a total immersion inside the darkest manifestations of what the German theologist Rudolf Otto called "the numinous." The divine, in its most terrifying forms, takes life from chaotic sounds and revealed words whose intent is to represent the mystic terror and the undefeatable fascination of Death, the human nullification, in favor of a complete prostration to the One whose light is spread out of the darkest vacuum. Ascend and descend with FIDES INVERSA's Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans...

 

New Album
 

Black/Gray Galaxy

 
Tracks 1 to 3 were originally released as the Troops Of Unfeigned Might 7".
Track 4 was originally released on the split 7" with StarGazer.
Track 5 was originally released on the split 7" with Morbid Upheaval.
Track 6 was originally released on the If You Can't Eat It Or Fuck It... Then Kill It! (A Tribute To Carnivore) compilation CD.
Track 7 was originally released on the split 7" with Der Stürmer and Mudoven.

Norway's ILDFAR are something of an enigma. The band formed all the way back in 1994, by vocalist / multi-instrumentalist Favn, but left behind only one demo in 2003. However, upon reactivating in 2018, ILDFAR began blazing a trail of ancient-days Norse black metal with a quick succession of albums. So pure, so cold, this trio of records landed on such esteemed labels as Northern Silence and Wolfspell, but now under the banner of PURITY THROUGH FIRE, ILDFAR are prepared to blaze a new "old" trail.

Witness Der ligger et land. Immediately, ILDFAR's fourth album distinguishes itself with the much-more-measured mid-tempo pace and, most strikingly, largely clean vocals. However, before any worries of a slackening of black metal ethos arise, one need only listen to Der ligger et land to understand that Favn is picking up the torch left behind by Isengard's Høstmørke and expanding the (old, icy) canvas in compellingly new ways. To be sure, there's plenty of ILDFAR's previous, strictly-Norse fire here - just the recording alone evokes a solemn nostalgia for those forgotten realms - but Favn is stretching apart those sensations in a manner that's mystical, mesmerizing, and AMAZING. ​Also to be sure, there've been other sympatico souls who've likewise reinvigorated Isengard's template - ​namely, the axis of LIK, Lönndom, and Ehlder as well as Sweden's stalwart Grift - but ILDFAR's songwriting here is noticeably more melodic, utilizing clean(er) guitars to stunning effect, and overall textures that suggest stargazing rather than forest-roaming. 

Whatever way you arrive at Der ligger et land, it's guaranteed you'll be possessed to press "play" over and over again, luxuriating deeper into those textures and finding ever more new details with each spin. In short, ILDFAR have delivered an unsuspecting masterpiece.