ARVINGER
“Helgards Fall”
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I’m not a big fan of mid-tempo music. There’s this dragging-behind-feeling to it that I have a hard time getting into. It’s not like I live my life at 180/MPH but give me a really slow doom metal record or a fast and furious thrash metal ditto and I’m at joy. So when I put the “Helgards Fall” CD by Norwegian Arvinger in my player and out came some mid-tempo black metal I nearly wrote them of as a hopeless case. Having given it a couple more spins I got more and more accustomed to its tempo. I’m still not a hundred percent sure that it’s completely up my alley. I think I have to live with it a bit longer before I pass any final judgement. The thing you can say about Arvinger is that they follow in the new Norwegian black metal style but with a slower tempo and a bit more folkish approach. www.arvinger.com

-Anders Ekdahl