Martröð – Draumsýnir Eldsins (Review)

This is the debut album from international, (Iceland/US), black metallers Martröð.

Martröð is brought to us by current/ex-members of Chaos Moon, Häxanu, Osgraef, Ringarë, Manetheren, Vörnir, Wormlust, and a whole lot more. Draumsýnir Eldsins contains four songs spread over 37 minutes, and takes the listener on a journey into spectral dissonance.

Draumsýnir Eldsins offers up an exceptional slice of dissonant black metal. It’s an uncommon blend of vicious intensity, psychedelic unreality, and atmospheric reach. The songs are violent, but otherworldly, allowing for warped aggression and immersive depth to coexist in a dream-like haze of swirling chaos and brutal darkness.

Draumsýnir Eldsins is an album of great texture, and is enhanced in key places by elements such as strings and choirs. The songs are intricate and involved. Their scope ranges across various landscapes; all are blackened, devastated, and lost, yet all have their detailing and areas of interest left intact. Martröð unleash a withering, maniacal, unnatural sonic attack on the listener, but also imbue their music with powerful atmospheric and melodic components that elevate the maelstrom of ferocity considerably.

Draumsýnir Eldsins is a raging thunderstorm, punctuated by moments of tense calm and corrupt beauty. It’s an album of maddening complexity and slithering insidious darkness, yet when you give yourself over to it, all of that falls away and you’re swept along in the music’s current in a torrent of emotive depth. Put differently, an album of this sort could easily be an impenetrable vortex of sound, but against the odds Draumsýnir Eldsins allows the listener in, making them part of the mayhem, and rewarding them with gifts fit for a monarch.

Martröð have impressed. This is esoteric black metal delivered with scope and ambition. It manages to provide an obscure, uncommon experience that’s a privilege to become absorbed in. Released frustratingly late into 2025, Draumsýnir Eldsins would likely adorn many more year end lists than it probably will had it have been unleashed on the world earlier. Regardless of that though, you will not want to miss out on this underground gem.

Essential listening.