A line of fire
Flickers on mist enshrouding knees
Hooded carriers of torches file
Through the dark and twisted trees
The trees, the forest,
The trees in the forest
We worshipped in sacred groves
Effigies on wooden poles
Whispering with dead souls
I once did this
Scuffing through groves
That whisper old songs
And riddles to solve
We longed for the mead hall
The symbel and boast
To walk and crackle through the soft bracken
I see what this hidden world was for
And what it meant to the heathen mind
A gateway to interaction with gods
I acknowledge my bloody past
Of sacrifice within these trees
It is part of us
And so I return here
In modern ways
Drink to the evolution
Of our new heathen hearts!
A more melody-driven album than Battle Staffs... with a tighter feel to the song structures, but still retaining that rich, doom-sodden heaviness. This release came out four years after Battle Staffs... and it’s always good to see a band further develop their sound, without losing one drop of the raw energy that drew you to them in the first place Ken Goodey
The great Oakland atmospheric black metal band Abstracter returns with a punishing new EP pulled from the depths of hell. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 17, 2021
This has been staple listening for me since I first got the CD in 2006. Raw but not to the extent that it is unlistenable, the riffs are heavy and memorable, with each song having it's own identity.
Wartooth's vocals are certainly a highlight of Bretwaldas' sound. Rough and gritty, in the best way, as he snarls out lyrics about Dark Ages warriors, heathenism and nature. If you can imagine if Lemmy was a Brummie and sang on an early Black Sabbath album then you're getting somewhere near the sound of this Midlands duo.
This album is class from beginning to end but if I was to have to choose highlights I'd go for album opener The Haunted Ride, Iron Skies (a song of two gloriously different halves) and Beneath the Eaves. The latter appeared on a CD with Zero Tolerance magazine way back and was the undisputed stand out track on there. Grimslath