Rating: 7.0

Country: Sweden

Release Date: 2003

Record Label: Cryptia Productions

Track list:
1. Transylvanian Fullmoon
2. From a Black Funeral Coffin
3. Winter of Obscurity
4. On Black Winter Thrones
5. Shadows of the Black Ram
6. From a Black Funeral Coffin (Second Version)
7. On Black Winter Thrones (Second Version)
8. Northern Realm of Black Frost (Second Version)

Band Website: Nastrond

Nastrond - From A Black Funeral Coffin

Draugr - Vocals, guitars
Arganas - Drums, percussion

On first impression early Nastrond seems to be a Swedish-tinted Gorgoroth clone. Melodic tremolo-picking, typical harsh-but-not-too harsh production, fast but non-blasting drums and a slightly insane sounding singer; in short: the works.

And yet it soon becomes apparent that there is more to this band than aping the Norse greats. The melodic tremolo riffs progress in decidedly odd ways and hit some very strange notes in the middle or end of certain guitar phrases, something which gets more noticeable the further you get into this release where nearly every riff is somehow different than how it ought to be. It's almost impossible to pinpoint how or why this is, but it's definitely consistent throughout this entire demo and certainly intentional; you can hear they are not just randomly playing chords; the off-beatness is deliberate. The drumming too has this bizarreness, pounding away before either producing fills that are just slightly off or accentuating the hidden bestial nature of this music with some deep bass-drum hits that remind me very much of Beherit's early work. And the vocals are downright psychotic. For almost the entire length of the demo Draugr snarls and screams like a lunatic beast. While technically the vocalist sounds like a generic bm-singer, he outdoes most of them in sheer intensity and viciousness. He sounds downright rabid!

So this is almost typical early Scandinavian black metal with all manner of sinister twists and demonic intensity, where nearly every part is somehow ‘wrong' yet perfectly right in their own way. This nearly occult strangeness was carried over into their later full-lengths and perfected on their magnum opus Age of Fire which ranks as one of the most esoteric releases in my collection. But this demo already carried that quality in a more primitive form.

This release had recently been re-issued with new versions of From a Black Funeral Coffin and On Black Winter Thrones redone in 2002 (as well as Northern Realm of Black Frost which is really a slightly shorter version of …Funeral Coffin). These versions are very interesting since they remain very true to the originals while making the strange sounding riffs appear even more alien at times. They further enhance this by applying some well done creepy as hell background synths at appropriate times.

Perhaps to someone not as heavily into black metal as me, this release would not sound as original as it really is, but if you're already a fan of this style and can notice the subtle differences in various melodic tremolo riff-styles, this is well worth picking up.

August 20th, 2007