ISENORDAL : “Requiem for Eirênê”

ISENORDAL is an American sextet whose music can hardly fit into any specific stylistic frameworks. However, whether you like black metal, doom metal or neofolk, whether you like the rawer production or the more polished sound, their work will enchant you and you will enjoy listening to the deep atmospheres created in rapture, telling visual stories in your mind.
“Requiem for Eirênê”, ISENORDAL’s third full-length album, will be released in early March via Prophecy Productions. In the work, you can expect a strong variety and stylistic symbiosis, which it is very likely that you have not heard in a similar form until now. Within a song you’ll sometimes go from funeral doom metal depths with deep vocals to neofolk instrumental moments topped with soaring black metal screams and medieval synths, and the next moment a female ethereal voice soars over a melodic harsh instrumental like in the good old doom metal records from the 90s in the style of old Draconian or Anathema. With four vocalists interweaving their magical voices in different parts of the tracks, each song is a captivating musical narrative that immerses you in its unique atmosphere.
On the album you will find impactful, diverse and intense tracks such as the immersive “Await Me, Ultima Thule”, where voices in the spirit of Cigarettes After Sex, James Kelly (Altar of Plagues, WIFE) and Les Discrets supported by ethereal female backing vocals soar on the backdrop of beautiful neofolk instrumentals including viola  and keyboards. In the song, the heaviness of the track progresses, exploding towards the end into a more frenetic metal instrumental and black metal vocals, towering alongside menacing doom metal growls and female chants.
You’ll also hear all-clean and acoustic tracks like “Requiem for Eirênê,” where ethereal female vocals unfold and melt into a light instrumental that exudes purity and clarity.
You will also not miss epic and more majestic atmospheres, such as in “Saturnine Apotheosis”, where the classical instrumental, especially the viola in it, is often in the foreground.
For its 55-minute duration, spread over five lengthy tracks, “Requiem for Eirênê” delivers a fabulous array of sounds, stylistic fusions and atmospheres, all the while leading deep doom metal influences with neofolk elements enveloping them with a dense sonic veil.
The songs are written carefully and in a tempting manner, although the second half of the album seems to me a little more barren than the first few tracks, where the atmosphere is far more captivating and provocative.
Each of them reveals a different stage in the development of the conceptual story that spans the entire album. The story was created by drummer Brian Spenser and reflects a personal experience that is transformed into a deep mythological world, musically illustrated by ISENORDAL, for which the band draws inspiration from ancient myth, the occult, astrology and tarot to express a spiritual journey involving love, loss, grief in all its stages, hope, disappointment, spiritual revelation, ending with apotheosis – the transformation into divine power.  And if you take a closer look at the album cover created by  Guido Mauas, it is in the nudity of the female figure and the burning pyre that one perceives the mystical sense of freedom and escape from the conventional that are at the roots of the music here.
“Requiem for Eirênê” owns  the full potential  to surprise many  music lovers with its rebellious nature and the fact that it cannot be strictly taken as prisoner to specific category. For some it may be a curse, for others a blessing, but the fact is that ISENORDAL’s soundscapes on this album paint hallucinatory-like pictures in the mind and transport the listener through a powerful atmospheric story.

Favorite song: “Await Me, Ultima Thule”

You can hear the song here:

Band: ISENORDAL
Album: “Requiem for Eirênê”
Label: Prophecy Productions
Release date: March 8th, 2024
Pre-order link: https://bit.ly/3Rs13cT