Blut Aus Nord – Ethereal Horizons
Release Date: 28th November 2025
Label: Debemur Morti Productions
Bandcamp
Genre: Avant Atmospheric Melodic Ambient Black Metal
FFO: Oranssi Pazuzu, Spectral Lore, Wolves in the Throne Room, Suffering Hour, The Great Old Ones, Sig:Ar:Tyr.
Review By: Malte Brigge
I won’t pretend to understand everything Blut Aus Nord is and does. Their history is too long, too storied and too strange to recap. I’m late to the BANdwagon, first getting to know them around Hallucinogen. Living life basically in the studio makes not only for awe-inspiring prolificity, but enviable time to develop skills and build mythos. Detractors argue that mastermind Vindsval commits every idea to tape without scrutiny, while fans appreciate the wildly diverse aspects of a unique artistic vision. Whether as a group (usually with W.D. Feld on drums and keyboards and GhÖst on bass) or on his own, whether you get it or not, Vindsval has an experimental mind and a singular approach. From icy, raw black metal to industrial fusion to cosmic psychedelia, Blut Aus Nord is as Blut Aus Nord does. So… what are they now on their 16th longplay, Ethereal Horizons?
Nothing anywhere states definitively who plays on the album, but promo pictures show three shrouded figures, suggesting a band at work. More importantly, Ethereal Horizons feels like a band playing together, creating finely woven entities with room for exploration. The drumming is raw and energetic with a full, rich tone. Every light tap of a cymbal cuts through the sound with steel precision, every crash explodes, the snare is sharp and tight. It all nestles comfortably in the mix, guiding the songs around every turn, such as when a soft drum lick on The Fall Opens the Sky bridges hard-hitting runs with a quiet, moody, clean doubling of synths and guitars. The many guitar layers take on almost orchestral qualities. Fans of Hallucinogen will recognize their star power, and Ethereal Horizons may be that album’s counterpoint as you’ll find zero solos speeding to the cosmos— it’s all atmospheric tremolo, melodic leads, blackened grooves making you think “riff!” and chorused cleans. If this album were called Memoria Vetusta IV, you wouldn’t blink an eye.
Vindsval’s vocals do a whole lot of everything. Shadows Breathe First introduces you to the balancing act between his soil-thick blackened ploughs, gaze-y, emo-esque cleans and warbly chorals that hang like a sky over melodic horizons. Much has been said over the years, not always positive, about his various vocal experimentations, but the way he flows from the harsh to the clean never felt more natural. At the recent listening party, many compared these cleans to Robert Smith, which is fair, but I’m hearing shades of Ian Curtis, as well, the baritone effectively employed to cast a brooding, thoughtful pall. On Seclusion, he throws out tremulous bursts of spectral howls, and on What Burns Now Listens he cycles between droning ambiance, harsh crawls and ghostly cleans with an almost hypnotic allure. The drive between guitar patterns and vocal layers helps Ethereal Horizons live up to its name, an album full of beautiful, abstracted constructions.
What holds it back from near-perfection is a slight excess of repetition (What Burns Now Listens, Seclusion) and a tendency to drop into long, ambient passages. While these seek transcendence at times (Seclusion, The Ordeal), overreliance becomes egregious and effects wear thin. I love the plunge in The Fall Opens the Sky because it builds, converges and rebuilds until it crushes like a landslide. The last two minutes of The Ordeal feel like the song leaps off a cliff and spreads its wings, floating on updrafts that raise it to quiet contemplation. Penultimate Twin Suns Reverie, however, is two minutes of underwater dreaming, but many repeat listens have not convinced me of its necessity or placement. Twelve-minute closer The End Becomes Grace has a lovely, almost major key uplift but contains two long, pulsating, drone minutes in the middle and three full minutes of a hushed, airy fadeout that feels indulgent after half a minute. Since you aren’t waiting for anything, it’s easy to say, “Alright, what’s next?” The answer, if you keep listening, is nothing, and maybe that’s the point, but it could achieve this same effect in half the time. Although these passages aren’t forced or inorganic, they also don’t feel fully justified.
Ethereal Horizons finds atmospheric tremolo furies morphing into melodic structures, blast beats molting into grooves, subterranean vocals springing into dramatic, echoey cleans and explosive drives soaring into cosmic transcendence. Blut Aus Nord have created one of the finest and most memorable expressions of their artistic vision with an album guaranteed to break many year-end lists. Ethereal Horizons may be their most complete and fully realized record, leaving me to wonder what they could possibly do next.
(4 / 5)
