Band: Curse
Title: Void Above, Abyss Below
Label: Schwarzdorn Production
Distribution: Soulfood / Sure Shot Worx
Release date: March 25th 2011
Review: CD

Einar ‘Eldur’ Thorberg is known from great acts like Potentiam or the mighty Fortid (with last year’s killer-release Fall Of The Ages, the third part of the Voluspå-triptych, posted on March 30th 2010), his collaboration with Norway’s Sykdom, or his first band, Thule. When the latter split up in 1998, Eldur started the solo-outfit Curse, which went on in the vein of Thule qua lyrical concept and musical approach. Throughout the years, Curse evolved into a ‘band’, yet in 2010 Eldur moved to Norway (he is from Iceland) – this is when and where Daniel Theobald (Pantheon I, Twisted Autumn Darkness, 13 Candles, and since then also involved with Fortid) joined to perform the drums and percussions. The result is somewhat different from the past efforts, if not it has to do with a more professional yet enormously rough and scraping sound and the renewed line-up. And experience… Besides, Void Above, Abyss Below was written and recorded in forty two days only, and half of the album was improvised during the recording sessions. It sort of shows, because the rawness of this material sounds pure and unpolished.
The nine tracks bring mainly buzz-sawing and grim Nordic-sounding Underground Black Metal with a spirit that brings back to mind the eighties and earliest nineties. Think Norwegian acts like early Satyricon, Taake, Carpathian Forest, Darkthrone, Mayhem or Khold, or Swedish colleagues à la Pest, Bathory and Damnation, injected by the grooving Dirt’n’Rock-attitude of Motörhead or Vreid. In general, the album is up-tempo and fast, including some lightning or close-to-blasting debaucheries. However, when the band decelerates, the atmosphere gets even colder and more violent. And what about those noisy, droning and acoustic elements in closure Priests Of The Underworld? The uncompromising hymns are pretty varying, in spite of a total lack on modernism or progression.
Not original yet qualitatively far above the average level of the grey masses – and therefore highly recommendable!

87/100

Ivan Tibos.