When this was shared with my I saw the name Aldaaron and thought” fucking sweet, that’s the planet they blow up in Star Wars!” But upon actually looking at the album and seeing a depiction of the Battle of Helm’s Deep from Lord of the Rings (NERD!) I felt a little confused. Go figure, Aldaaron (which the planet from Star Wars is spelled “Alderan”) is actually a Tolkien reference, albeit also misspelled. It’s the name of some forest king, or something like that, but only when spoken in a dead version of an early Elf language (NERD!), so um yeah, Aldaaron take a cue from Tolkien’s work.

To be honest I didn’t look to deeply into the themes, I typically don’t with this kind of stuff, I just like to know for a bit of flavoring, and regardless of whatever nerdery they’re up to, this album is a massive beast of amazement.

Surely you’ve guessed by now that this is black metal. French black metal at that, and with that comes all the ferocity and evilness you can handle. Surprisingly melodic for the French, this album is unrelentingly catchy with those riffs. It veers into (unsurprisingly) some pagan black metal areas here and there with some chanting, clean vocals, and acoustic guitars but for the most part it’s a guitar driven, tightly produced and executed album. It’s not pushing boundaries like a lot of their fellow countrymen but who fucking cares when they run they’ve made this album so stellar. Top notch, all around.