Heimdalls Wacht – Mystagogie – Lieder Voll Ewigkeit

Although we were treated with an excellent split LP with Ancestors Blood earlier this year, ‘Mystagogie – Lieder Voll Ewigkeit’ marks the return of Heimdalls Wacht after what seems like an elongated hibernation of seven years. While the previously released split LP marked the swan song of Ancestors Blood, it really seemed to have served as an appetizer for a resurrected Heimdalls Wacht.

Over the years of their existence, this year the band is celebrating their 20^th anniversary, the band has kept a steady pace of releasing until 2006’s ‘Geisterseher’. But it doesn’t seem this rather large hiatus had much of an effect on the musical direction the band took on ‘Mystagogie – Lieder Voll Ewigkeit’. In the course of those two decades the band gradually shifted from a Pagan-tinged Black Metal band to the multi-coloured elusive band that they have become anno 2023.

There is still an unmistakable and profound Pagan feel to the music, in fact, it still forms the very core of the band’s musical identity. Yet, they have added a large amount of different ingredients to the mix, making it sound way more diverse than on their earlier works. Compared to the earlier steps the band added a multitude of melodies, more acoustic Folk passages, clean singing and some interesting soundscape effects. This indeed allows the band to sound way more diverse at the one hand but that goes to the expense of a bit of consistency. While the title suggests to have a coherent message, “mystagogie” means something like the consecrating into mysteries and the band still seems to sport a total contempt of modern society, the music seems to flow from left to right and back again. Still, after having heard the album a good couple of times, it all started to make more sense. It is in this within this diversity that lies the power of the album, yet it perhaps requires a bit of stamina and perseverance. But whether you perceive the album as being a masterpiece of a collage of ideas and utter brilliance or have difficulties in adjusting to the shapeshifting character of the music, it is songs like ‘Jeder Abschied Atmet Den Tod’ that will leave no admirer of Pagan Black Metal or German Black Metal in general untouched

Regardless, ‘Mystagogie – Lieder Voll Ewigkeit’ feels like a more than decent new chapter in the German Black Metal book, it has all the necessary standard elements but Heimdalls Wacht was able to enhance it into something that is perfectly recognizable as their own.