Once formed as the solo project of the Irish musician Joseph Deegan, Slidhr nowadays is a three-man band located in Iceland that consists of members from Ireland, Iceland and Germany… For those that care about geography. The band first came to my attention with their ‘Spit of the Apostate’ mLP on Terratur Possessions and struck me with the forward-thrusting relentless Black Metal that had quite a unique sound with fitting bellowed vocals. The raw and suffocating sound of that release was not carried forward on debut album ‘Deluge’, which has a more sterile sound that didn’t appeal to me as much as the preceding mLP. And while the production of the sophomore record ‘Futile Fires of Men’ was a much better fit, it didn’t manage to maintain the same impression on me as the first mLP, or the split with Acherontas that was released between both albums. Nevertheless, the appearance of a new album caught my eye, and thus I took a deep dive and retrospective into the collected works of Slidhr in preparation of my view on record number three, ‘White Heart!’.
One trademark of the sound of the band is a relentless onslaught of drums together with a suffocating sound. To start with a first conclusion, ‘White Heart!’ is arguably the most strangling whirlwind thus far. This is part because of the crushing production, which finds itself somewhere between ‘Futile Fires of Man’ and the split with Acherontas. This production in my opinion works much better than the sterile approach on ‘Deluge’, and it makes the production on ‘White Heart!’ the most intense to date. But whether it is because of this sound or not, it comes a somewhat different emphasis within the music.
Opener ‘The Temple Armoury’, which starts off with a great clean vocal ritual, is a dense and smothering song in which the unrelenting pace drags you onward. Within this track, riffs and melodies are harder to discern except for when near the end it takes a somewhat contrarian and dissonant turn. Within this massive sound, the music of Slidhr touches upon the realms of Death Metal more than ever before. This is even more obvious in the threatening and brooding mid tempo ‘Trench Offering’, a track that somehow distantly reminds me of ‘Lost Paradise’, the debut of Paradise Lost. Songs like ‘Wall of the Reptile’ and ‘What the Gauntlet Bestows’ are closer to the preceding albums, with accentuating and skincrawling riffs, and phenomenally dynamic drum work. These are also a few of the tracks in which clean vocals surface. In the case of ‘Wall of the Reptile’ these are choir-like, countering the more bellowing cries of Joseph Deegan to enhance the atmosphere. In ‘What the Gauntlet Bestows’ and ‘Hate’s Noose Tightens’, clean vocals appear a little more on the forefront and add a certain ritualistic sense to the music, but admittedly, they don’t have the same impact as in ‘The Temple of Armoury’ and are something to get used to a bit.
Listening thoroughly through the album there are a few observations to be made. The production has never been more choking and menacing, which certainly adds to the intensity of the record. But it seems the defining hooks and leads are a bit more subdued, at least in some of the tracks. While certainly recognizable as a Slidhr record, it seems a purposeful step into a different direction, outside the template set on their previous recordings. That’s certainly praiseworthy, but at the end of the day it to me leads to an album that’s shy of its potential, and loses its gripping qualities as it progresses towards the second half. Don’t let that stop you from checking the album out though, as the swirling choking mass that is ‘White Heart!’ is played impeccably and in overpowering fashion.
