(written by Islander)
Six years after their last album, the Russian band Halter are returning this month with a new full-length. Titled Another Strong Hand For A Damned Land, it’s set for co-release on May 25th by Symbol Of Domination (Moldova) and the Russian labels Wroth Emitter and Arx Productions.
It brings to the table old-school death/doom tinged with touches of sludge, stoner, and gothic metal. It was written and recorded during difficult times in Halter’s country, times marked by the Covid pandemic, the strengthening of a tyrannical regime, and of course the brutal war.
Unavoidably, all of those events affected the music and the lyrics. The labels tell us: “Lyrically, through profound symbolism, the songs are filled with the experiences of recent years, an anti-war message, a desire for freedom, and bitterness over the fate of people in the region.”
What we have for you today is the premiere of a video for an immediately infectious and powerfully moving track called “Holocaust Jackals“, which is powerful on multiple levels.
Photo by Vadim Uglanov
“Holocaust Jackals” is a tremendously compulsive song, one that appeals equally to the primitive reptile brain in all of us (the sector that causes reflexive movement) and to the vessel within that houses the broken parts of our souls.
The backbone of the song consists of iron-shod chugging riffs whose compulsive grooves bring Bolt Thrower to mind. Halter augment that with gut-slugging, head-cracking drumwork laced with a few deft fills, bone-bruising bass throbs, and gritty, guttural growls.
While those ingredients are triggering reflexive muscle movement in listeners the song also infiltrates quickly writhing and heavily groaning arpeggios that in their feeling seem to straddle a line between sinister menace and hopeless agony.
The song also includes a pair of striking extended guitar solos that intensify the song’s doomed, distressing, and occult moods. The first one arrives as the song reaches its mid-point, eerily manifesting like the warping and wailing pain of apparitions. The second one, a dual-guitar affair, ushers the song to its conclusion, escalating from gritty sounds of dismal sorrow to wrenching cries of soul-stricken grief.
HALTER is:
Dmitriy ‘Mid’ Pyshkin – guitars, backing vocals
Roman ‘Raif’ Dmitriev – guitars
Vadim ‘Wad’ Uglanov – bass
Alexander ‘Ottar’ Kudryashov – drums
Alex ‘Curche’ Pyshkin – vocals
Another Strong Hand For A Damned Land was recorded at Yar Groove Studios by Roman Dmitriev. It was mixed and mastered by Arkady Navaho, and it features cover artwork and layout by Alena Mint.
The trio of labels identified above will release the album in a jewel-case CD edition with a 12-page booklet (limited to 300 copies), and digitally. They recommend it for fans of Bolt Thrower, Cathedral, My Dying Bride, Obituary, Six Feet Under, and Coffins.
Find more info via the links below, and also check out the album’s first single, “Parable of the Rapist“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://symbolofdomination.bandcamp.com/album/sodp165-halter-another-strong-hand-for-a-damned-land-2026
https://www.wroth-emitter.org/
https://www.arxprod.ru/
HALTER:
https://halter2009.bandcamp.com/