This is the sixth album from Vanhelgd, a death metal band from Sweden.
I got quite excited when I saw Vanhelgd’s newest appear; it’s been a long six years since 2018’s Deimos Sanktuarium after all. That record even made it onto that year’s year end list, as did its predecessor Temple of Phobos in 2016. 2014’s Relics of Sulphur Salvation didn’t, but probably should have somewhere.
So here we are in 2024. Have Vanhelgd done enough to secure a spot on this year’s list? Has their time away changed the band? Have I changed? What’s going on? Where am I? Let’s find out.
Atropos Doctrina provides us with 41 minutes of sinister death metal. Vanhelgd’s music has always been on the darker side, but Atropos Doctrina has gone deeper into the blackness than most. Cloaking itself in ominous immersive atmosphere, a blackened veneer, and an ocean of suffocating doom, this is Vanhelgd at their most malevolent.
The songs may be darker and more mood-rich, but they’re also deadlier and refined. Vanhelgd have focused their songwriting to a sharpened point, ensuring that any filler is cut and any fat trimmed away, leaving only the meaty goodness that they know we want so badly.
Despite my talk of the music’s doom-drenched atmospheric components, this is still death metal at its core, and will still rip your face off, it’ll just do so while also conjuring a gloomy blackened vista to bury you in. Vanhelgd’s worldbuilding is comprehensive and well-rendered, taking you on a journey that could well be your last if you’re not paying careful attention to where you’re going. Atropos Doctrina is venomous and threatening, and Vanhelgd are eerie guides to what feels like the coming end of days.
The songs are thick with potent feelings, all bent towards apocalyptic purposes. The aggressive aspect of the music exists not in its own right, as it does in much standard death metal, but only to make the atmospheres more fraught and lethal. The songwriting is built around the increasingly fraying line between death and black metal, resulting in Vanhelgd’s most hybrid release yet. You can hear the classic Swedish death metal elements, but these now serve colder, more esoteric masters.
Atropos Doctrina chronicles Vanhelgd’s increasingly dark journey into their own unique heart of darkness. It’s a triumph of breaking free from a source genre’s stylistic restrictions, allowing a band to develop into something uniquely satisfying. Of course, Vanhelgd have been on this path for many years now, but Atropos Doctrina is the furthest they have travelled, and the fullest manifestation of their compelling vision for extreme metal.
Impressive. Terrifying. Essential.
Wonderbox Metal 