Once more the Canadian black metal outfit Frosthammer sends dark tidings my way, this time in the form of the latest conceptual album titled Nexus of Time. Based on Stephen King’s Dark Tower, this album attempts to portray the incessant drive than man seems to have in destroying both our planet and ourselves. While I found the last effort, The Cold Wind of Eternity quite good, this effort leaps up and over it in all aspects. Truthfully, this is the band’s best effort to date.

While Frosthammer is, by all accounts, black metal music the spectrum here is so wide with these guys. You can become immersed in the tranquility of the slow, pacing aspects of “In this Haze of Green and Gold”, only to find yourself lost in the tempestuousness of the surrounding aura of dismal cold within the song. The naturally fuzzy guitar tone isn’t as amateurish as you would expect from some lo-fi black band, but its elemental feel of rawness is certainly a rush of total bleakness. Where “The End of an Age” begins is so callously grim that you actually forget for a while that these guys have no Scandinavian ties (at least not geographically). I’m so impressed with the sound and style they’ve captured on this little epic; I absolutely knew these guys would carve the perfect niche in the black metal arena, and they’ve done so and then some.

The musicianship and arrangements have matured so intently on Nexus of Time; the structure to the songs isn’t as haphazard as it might have been here and there on early releases, but Frosthammer seems to have found its place. The haunting vocal that begins “The End of an Age (part 2)” is seemingly perfect; there’s no racing its own pace or contrived, bombastic wailing. It goes in under the guise of a subtle and ethereal guide into the dungeon-like tone of the track and doesn’t overpower the music. Where “Song of the Rose” leads us is a forlorn jaunt into a beautiful sonnet only a band of true freezing atmosphere could accurately capture. The keyboard sound on this album isn’t of top caliber, but it’s far from low-totem Casio sound. For me, a staunch hater of keyboards as a replacement for guitars, this is the proper way to utilize the instrument to its fullest capability. It creates a surrounding of dread, fear, warmth, cold, love, hate, thoughtfulness and then despondency - Frosthammer can initiate these feelings intimately and offer you no qualms about doing so.

How has this band been overlooked for so long defies logic; sure, there are bands out there that are sonically more memorable, I won’t deny this, and I’m sure the guys in the band won’t either. The trick to creating a lasting effort in this vast wasteland of black metal, homogeneous or polluted, is to dig into the mind and soul with a blunt tool and etch visuals into your psyche. Marduk, as much as I love the band, doesn’t do that all too often anymore. Neither does Gorgoroth. However, Vinterland, Mayhem’s De Mysteriis dom Sathanas, Dissection, all of these bands had it and used it to amazingly high degrees, and the impact has been legendary. I don’t know if Frosthammer will even be legendary; the odds say no, due in large part to the pool being overcrowded with wasteful people denigrating the movement. But in the meantime the music from Frosthammer is honest and pure of heart, forgoing happenstance and growing within the sound of the last few demos has worked wonders for the guys. This is a trance-like trip into the cold in each of us, all the while we’re left destroying the earth and all of Her resources as if they were a right rather than a privilege. Nexus of Time has captured the spirit and passed it on to us in the form of black, sorrowful pieces fit for intent examination.
             *Nexus of Time is available for free on the band's bandcamp page: Frosthammer

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*Comments:

1.  The Waste Lands
2.  One From Many
3.  In This Haze of Green and Gold
4.  The End of an Age (part 1)
5.  The End of an Age (part 2)
6.  Song of the Rose
7.  The Tunnel
8.  Nexus of Time

Total playing time:  36:07

Release Date: May 15, 2011
Label: Band Self Released

Frosthammer - Nexus of Time

Reviewer: Chris

May 24, 2011