With ‘Winter Holocaust’ the prolific Ancient North arrives at its 5th full-length album and second one in 2024. That in itself is not even that unique these days, but what is striking is that with just about every album the band sounds (completely) different. For example, the usual Darkthrone and Gorgoroth influences came by on the first record and later we heard a more Black ‘n’ Roll sound that seemed to reference Carpathian Forest. On the latest album, released in January of 2024, the band had taken a more melodic and atmospheric direction where comparisons with the earlier work of Satyricon and Ulver, for example, were obvious. It will not be a surprise then that with ‘Winter Holocaust’ Forlorn, the man behind Ancient North, changed his tactics again…
It takes less than ten seconds to determine that Forlorn now has his eyes on Immortal’s first two records. The oppressive sound and driving riffs are an evident homage to ‘Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism’, Immortal’s fantastic 1992 debut album. The icy vocals that seem to carry a hint of reverb complete the obvious comparison. However the album retains this rather unique sounding production, some of the songs tend to lean a bit more to ‘Pure Holocaust’ and even some riffs that remind of ‘Blizzard Beasts’ makes ‘Winter Holocaust’ come full circle on the Immortal tribute.
In just under 40 minutes ‘Winter Holocaust’ continues to fire a barrage of Demonaz-styled riffs and that typical relentless drumming. Although it is needless to say that Ancient North never really touches the genius of the Norwegians, but the attempt is more than worth checking out. Even though those 40 minutes tend to feel a bit long for an album that isn’t always holding up its tension.
Forlorn once again shows that his talent of mimicking the classic sounds of (mainly) Scandinavian Black Metal is admirable. Now we have had almost all of Norway’s biggest inspirators, I think, to complete the whole thing, it is time to visit a full-on symphonic affair that resemblance the first two albums of Emperor. But, honestly, I think it would serve Forlorn more to just go and find a steady musical course and settle for a sound of his own.
