(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Lord Ashler, bassist of the multi-national black metal band Gjallarhorn’s Wrath, whose debut album The Silver Key is out now on Non Serviam Records.)

There was no way to pass by a release with obvious references to Lovecraftian mythology. The Silver Key may not be his coolest story, but as an important part of the Dream Cycle, it remains a landmark in his bibliography. Gjallarhorn’s Wrath is a young international black metal project that has nothing to do with Norse mythology, according to which Gjallarhorn was the golden horn of Heimdall, the guardian of the gods. The sound of this horn is supposed to herald the coming of Ragnarök, but I didn’t encounter anything of the sort in the project’s first album.

Formally, the members of Gjallarhorn’s Wrath live in four different countries, but in reality, the guitarist, bassist, and drummer hail from Spain, where they once played black metal all together. Only vocalist Alex Caron is originally from Canada.

The guys describe their black metal as “symphonic,” and such qualifications always make me wary, but Gjallarhorn’s Wrath successfully avoid all the traps of the unbridled carnival madness that some “symphonized” bands tend to indulge in. Orchestrations are present, they are tasteful, but, as a rule, they fade into the background compared to the guitar, which is naturally the main driving force of the songs, and, despite some theatricality, the project easily switches to the mode of destructive manifestations and, more rarely, reaches the level of infernal cacophony.

We interviewed Gjallarhorn’s Wrath’s bass-player Lord Ashler recently, and you can find it below easily. Continue reading »