HENGET – Beyond North Star
Release Date: 19th May 2023
Label: Season of Mist
Bandcamp
Genre: Doom, Avant-Garde, Black Metal.
FFO: Arcturus, Hyperion, Wilderun, King Crimson.
Review By: Carlos Tirado
First, I would like to disclose my Finnish bias. I go to Finland often, and obviously love Finnish metal, but most importantly, I live surrounded by Fins at home (I’m technically the only one without a Finnish citizenship there). All this has made me a bit of a fanboy, so when I received a promo claiming there was a new Finnish band in town that played Avant-Garde/Black metal, I was excited! You see, I know Finland is the land of metal, but mostly Death, Doom, and Power metal, experimental acts that would catch my attention were missing. However, I’m happy to say that’s not the case anymore!
Enter Beyond North Star, Henget’s debut album. The cover art already tells us that we’re about to embark in a wild trip. Let me just say that the music is as trippy as the cover art. Those flying hammer sharks that make me think of Gojira’s from Mars to Sirius foreshadow great things. One way to describe this album’s sound is as if Negral from Behemoth joined Arcturus. We have brutal blackened vocals, with a lot of colourful and exciting arrangements going on at the same time. Henkivallat is so much fun, it manages to be fast and aggressive, but also playful. It has such a headbanging hook in the final section, that reminds me a band can write challenging music without compromising catchiness.
The Great Spiral has a beautiful acoustic midsection that builds up into a heavy outro that I can only describe as dignifying. Beyond North Star starts with a spectacular intro that really embodies ascending into space, while the outro was a weird decision with all that baby talk, but maybe they just want to test we’re paying attention. A lot on this album feels like someone took psychedelic 70s Prog rock (King Crimson, and Yes) and put in a blender with 90s style Swedish Black metal (Dissection, Sacramentum, and Hyperion). Nouse is maybe the only track that doesn’t convince me yet. It’s minimalist, and it works well as a break from all the madness, but those strange vocals strongly remind me of Opeth’s By The Pain I see in Others, a track I like, but many hate because of the vocal decisions. It might be the heaviest elevator music that you’ll ever listen to.
All the songs are between three and six minutes, so time flies by quickly when basking in Beyond North Star. This album is short and ends with a bang. The lyrics are mushroom fuelled, but stay linked with each other, even the ones in Finnish, or so the Fins at home tell me, because my Finnish is at drunk tourist level right now. My only general complaint is that in some sections, the production sounds muddy. It almost feels like there’s some white noise going on in the background here and there. This could be because I’m reviewing the mp3 version or due to budget restraints, so I’m willing to give the FLAC version a chance. I’m adding Beyond North Star to my Bandcamp wishlist and you should too!
(4 / 5)
