Icelandic black metallers Auðn stream their exhilarating new album in full

(Image credit: Lilja Draumland)

Aside from cutting a their own, luminous path not just through Iceland’s burgeoning black metal scene, Hveragerði’s Auðn offer glorious proof that you can take listeners on an exhilarating musical journey without going post-, shoegaze or whatever newfangled indignity the dilettantes straight out of college are subjecting to it now.

Steeped in the high-velocity dynamics of Norway’s second wave, but infused with an expansive and plaintive personal sense of grandeur, Auðn’s forthcoming album, Farvegir Fyrndar, due to extend its wings and rise above the Season Of Mist compound on November 10. A heart-in-mouth, white-knuckle ride where the turbulent forces of nature are ridden as though they were rapids, it’s also an album where emotional yearning, the humbling sense of Something Bigger Than You and the desperate desire for some all-annihilating act of communion all conspire, all corralled into a final track, Í Hálmstráið Held, whose incandescent splendour is surely going to be one 2017’s most awe-inducing sonic highlights.

Thanks to the band and the label, you can take that journey yourself as we’re streaming Farvegir Fyrndar in full.

“We are proud to unveil our new album Farvegir Fyrndar in full,” say the band themselves. “For us it has been a long journey reaching this point. We put a lot of effort into making this second album as vast and powerful as possible. The songs are more complex and driven by emotion. Hopefully, they will strike you as hard as they did to us. Farvegir Fyrndar is in itself a journey as the title entails, which roughly translates as ‘Ancient Paths’ or ‘Ancient Riverbeds’. The feelings portrayed in these songs revolve around depression, loss, and the unknown as embodied by the vivid landscapes of our homeland, Iceland.”

So climb every mountain, look afar at every fjord and get ready to throw great spears of lightning across the firmament as you raise a claw to the wonders of Farvegir Fyrndar below!

Check out Auðn’s Facebook page here

Pre-order Farvegir Fyrndar here

And for lucky European mainland-dwellers, check out Auðn’s dates with Gaahls Wyrd below!

Having freelanced regularly for the Melody Maker and Kerrang!, and edited the extreme metal monthly, Terrorizer, for seven years, Jonathan is now the overseer of all the album and live reviews in Metal Hammer. Bemoans his obsolete superpower of being invisible to Routemaster bus conductors, finds men without sideburns slightly circumspect, and thinks songs that aren’t about Satan, swords or witches are a bit silly.