(written by Islander)

Gladium Regis was born in the early 2000s in Italy, and later moved forward in London to produce a dungeon synth release named Kingdom in 2020 (during the intervening years, the project’s alter ego Arcanist Augur Svafnir co-founded and fronted the Italian pagan black metal band Draugr). Now Svafnir has re-directed the music of Gladium Regis in a way intended to re-capture “the unpolished grandeur of early 1990s symphonic and epic black metal”, and the results are manifested in a new album named Quest.

Although Gladium Regis is Svafnir’s solo project, he is accompanied on Quest by some talented guests: Davide Straccione (Shores of Null) provided guest vocals on three songs; Lupus Nemesis (Atavicus) joined Svafnir on additional instrumentation, choral arrangements, and final mixing at Genxia Studios; and Tamoth (Obscura Nox Hibernis) contributed acoustic guitar passages for the album’s intro and intermezzo.

What we have for you today is the premiere of the second single from Quest, a song named “Durindana“. But before we get to it, we want to share some of the words of introduction provided by the Dusktone label, which will release the album on February 27th: Continue reading »