Unhallowing “Sworn to the Sanguine Arts”
Fabulous symphonic black metal from Sweden: Elliott Crafoord returns with a haunting new Unhallowing album.
Unhallowing, a one-man melodic black metal artist from Stockholm, Sweden, released one of 2024’s best debut albums. Now, the multi-talented Elliott Crafoord is back with a new Unhallowing album. “Sworn to the Sanguine Arts” is a tad more varied than its predecessor, “Hours of Reminiscence”. It delves deeper into the atmospheric, melancholic parts of this fabulous music.
While “Pacted Beneath the Silent Stars” is an eerie, slow-paced instrumental piece that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie, most of the music on the album is full-on, unapologetic black metal but with constant twists and turns. Brilliant tracks such as “Camilla’s Blood”, “Sisters of Undeath” and “The Soulrift” make this an excellent album by an emerging act on the Nordic extreme metal scene.
This is the kind of atmospheric, melodic black metal with symphonic touches you want to immerse yourself in. It demands your attention and is best listened to on full volume in the dark. It is sinister, haunting, chaotic and beautiful. Death, despair and damnation. It is a beautifully orchestrated highway to hell. Or perhaps a narrow path through a dark forest somewhere in the frozen north.
The album’s eight tracks add up to a playing time of more than one hour and twelve minutes. That is one long album in a world seemingly populated by people with short attention spans. But this album is worth the effort. It never gets boring. This is a smashingly terrific album.
Now, with two albums’ worth of song material, I hope that Elliott will take this to the next logical step by performing the music live. It is time to put a band together and take this show on the road. See you in the shadows!
