Quite an interesting project that comes from the baltic republics, this of Urskumug is a dedicated band to a raw inhuman black metal, tied a lot to the old traditions of the genre but also to the modern evolutions of it, and then to sampled sounds, enriched with a powerful electronic stratum that makes its fruition rather complex by the purists of the matter. Aborym is the first name popping up to mind listening to “Am Nodr”, but also realities like Anaal Nathrakh and Axis Of Perdition, for a gloomy mechanized sound that finds cracks in the obsessive repetition of the structure and in the continuous offering of alienating scores. The primal black metal remains well rooted in there, in the use of vocals and in the riffs too, but it’s the atmosphere to have changed, becoming even harder and more hostile, made dramatically heavy by the drum machine and by the large tempos that contrast with the furious riffing and the rhythmical itself, that always reaches some headache levels. The result is a violent album, directly beared by the dark Stygian waters and that takes us to pre-historical origins of the matter, so much that they like calling their music as “tribal black metal”, and for once we can totally agree with them. It’s not a simple work, but surely represents a huge proof for a band that has a lot to say.

Giorgio Fogliata