The Orchard ETHEREAL HORIZONS (LTD.DIGIPACK)

he wonderful 16th album from legendary Avant Black Metal paragons BLUT AUS NORD is the culmination of a 30-year vision - as mainman Vindsval connects each element of the band’s history to launch yet another intrepid exploratory evolution. "Ethereal Horizons" is BLUT AUS NORD fully realised: richer, deeper, grander, more enigmatic and simultaneously more human than ever. Intermeshing the earthen and the futuristic as a vessel for the dark dreamer, soaring and ascending to vivid realms. After spending the preceding few years immersed in the wyrd and uneasy world of Lovecraft, this guitars-forward and melodious new album feels more akin to the organic, intoxicating terrain of 2014’s "Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry" or 2019's "Hallucinogen" - a cosmic and consonant antidote to our incessant psychic battering from the bleak, cacophonous biosphere in which we reside. "Ethereal Horizons" incorporates otherworldliness from all eras of BAN - traces of churning dissonance, subtle industrialised elements, the weeping of celestial leads, V's spectral & subliminal snarl - but brings in a suite of new and more grounded feels too. Far-reaching melodic themes turn inward and outward, frequently resolving into the swing of classic, prog and post rock. The warmth of swirling psych-organ and expanses of kosmische synth provide a bed for emotive themes to build and release into full-throttle ruthlessness. Vocal stylings are wide-ranging as ever, utilising the distinctive cloudbusting cleans and choirs, but this time with a lazer-focus on wistful transcendent melodies, refrains and even out-and-out hooks.