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Blog Categories Review Eldprov (Sweden) - Rift - Reviewed By PowerMetal!

Eldprov (Sweden) - Rift - Reviewed By PowerMetal! Wednesday December 14 2022, 9:56 PM

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Eldprov (Sweden) - Rift - Reviewed By PowerMetal ! Check it out here at this link: https://www.powermetal.de/review/review-Eldprov/Rift,39573.html

Johann Hegg's beard is dyed black!

Right at the beginning of 'Affliction', shimmering leads lead to a majestic, black roaring frenzy, which immediately impales the listener, who is staring in disbelief at the photoshopped, supposed computer game cover, with imaginary Viking swords, drooling blood! What a chest-cracking opener! The song, including opulent chorales in the last third, also touches on the musical circles of AMON AMARTH to a large extent, but takes a completely different path due to the described sound power.

So the assumption that the new Viking sound from Sweden must have as long a beard as that of the musicians of AMON AMARTH can happily be described as a fallacy. Rather, the singer Ante Zoergel, Jonas Backe on all guitars and Simon Henell on the drums with very tasteful, powerful and extremely melodic black metallic guitar, vocal and emotional eruptions create the sound of ELDPROV into a bloody, fresh and very exciting metallic sound mixture to discolour. The band name means "fire test" in German.

'Vex', a bit thrashy, moves a lot more in the melodic death waters of the Viking ship of the mentioned fathers of Nordic Death Metal, from whom this track could also come. The sophisticated melody, convincing in the refrain with an original hook line, with a sublime, stomping middle part that is indispensable for this type of song, makes it, like the album opener, linger in your medium-term musical memory the first time you hear it.

The third song on the 35-minute debut album by ELDPROV from Gällivare in the Swedish province of Norbotten was released as a single in 2020 and takes what the opener already promises to the extreme: extremely powerful, highly motivated and black raging Viking Death Metal with a non-hand assigned AMON AMARTH list. This is proven by the melodies and the guitar leads of 'Until Nightfall' that stick in your head. Terrific work, which rightly reaped the first positive reactions two years ago and was able to create something like a small fan base.

True-metallic begins 'Silhouettes'. The vocals here sound similar to that of certain other Swedish melodic death metal bands that have been mentioned many times. Several virtuoso instrumented parts create almost too hectic Kurzweil in just three and a half minutes. I could wrap my head around this again with the lead solo, I love it that much!

At seven minutes, 'Third Crow' is the longest song on the album and, in my opinion, almost got the title "long-winded". But only almost...! The parts after the dignified, sublime beginning are familiar by now, but then, for a few moments, blackened AMONAMARTH arbitrariness follows. At minute 4:30 the band suddenly slows down completely and a mature, clear female voice sings a few words. After that, absolutely coherent, almost AMORPHIC instrumental guitar magic sparkles from the speakers until the acoustic finish! Magical!

The Swedish trio then thunders the soot-ridden melodic death metal trowel in its purest form with 'We, The Unclean': melodic, powerful, intoxicating! This song would make an excellent live set opener or encore. Ironically, the last track on "Rift", namely 'Hunt', is a small downer for my enthusiasm for the album, although it was released as a single last year. Here you really sound like, you know who. And that rather in the boring, umpteen-times heard, even the original on some older albums already often criticized, stomping-lethargic way from the hobby-death-metal-viking kit.

The musicians from ELDPROV really surprised me with their debut album. Perhaps the not a few guest musicians named in the band info can consider themselves lucky to have played here one day. Because if ELDPROV stays tuned and continues to write such gripping songs as they do on "Rift", get the recording sound a little rounder and also become a little more independent, the band can certainly win many more fans than they did in the Swedish Scene apparently already has. - PowerMetal

Release Date: September 16th, 2022

FFO: Dissection, Unanimated, Sacramentum

Location: Sweden

Eldprov (literally: fire test) is Swedish for ordeal or baptism of fire/trial by fire. The name perfectly symbolizes Sweden’s new melodic death metal band. What makes Eldprov stand out from the rest is that they aren’t scared to infuse elements from many genres. You can hear both thrash and black metal influences throughout the album, all closely following the golden era of the 90’s! Adding high profile guest artists to Rift such as Heljarmadr (Dark Funeral and Grá), Jacob Björnfot (Kvaen) and Johannes Axeman (ex-Wolf, Decameron) only validates the waves this debut album will do. Eldprov have released two singles already, both getting a lot of listens and have already created a fanbase waiting for the debut to be unleashed. The single “Until Nightfall” even got a physical self-release which sold out quickly, as well as patches and t-shirts selling out. All this before having a full album out testifies there are fans out there craving Eldprov music.

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