Hamferð - Men Guðs hond er sterk (2024)

Country: Faroe Islands
Style: Melodic Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 22 Mar 2024
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One place I always check at the end of a year is the Angry Metal Guy website, because they cover a lot more metal than I do and don't tend to be swayed by the trends that affect more mainstream reporting. Angry Metal Guy himself chose this as his favourite metal album of 2024, ahead of one album I hadn't heard of, Kanonenfieber's Die Urkatastrophe, and two that I've reviewed already, namely Fleshgod Apocalypse and Opeth. Clearly he likes Hamferð, because he also awarded their second and prior album, Támsins likam, his Album of the Year, in 2018. No, they're hardly prolific.

What he likes the most seems to be the way they merge two distinct sounds, whether he describes them as "dour and sinister, but simultaneously fragile" or "tragedy and hope". I also appreciate a sense of duality, which is most obvious to me in the vocal styles of Jón Aldará. He has two distinct ones. The rich harsh growl that he employs to open up Ábær and the album as a whole, is sourced from the doom/death textbook but with has relatively limited intonation. The soaring tenor that he uses to fill this music with a timeless ache is all nuance and far more typical for gothic metal.

The more I replayed the album, the more I heard that in the music behind him too. When he's in a death growl mode, the music is bludgeoning, often monotonous, and with a subtle echo, as if they play every instrument extra hard and so every individual sound resonates for longer. Sometimes, especially towards the end of songs, it slows even further to hint at funeral doom. However, when Aldará lifts into his clean voice, the music gains nuance too, creating soundscapes of mood. These songs are well worth listening to with a careful ear to see how it's all crafted, but only after a few times through letting it all just wash over you as slabs of emotion.

As you might imagine from all that, I do like this album, but I don't like it as much as Angry Metal Guy does. Ábær and Rikin took a while to grow on me. They got there eventually, Rikin first with a merger of near funeral doom monotony and death metal flurry, the clean vocal sections joined by some surprisingly lively guitarwork as nuance. However, on every listen through, and I'm up to six or seven, it's Marrusorg that grabs me first.

It's the longest song on the album, albeit hardly an epic at six minutes and change. However, this one has an aching grandeur to it that speaks to me, with a calmer folkier clean voice to open it up and a delicacy that doesn't negate size, as if this is a vast mansion of a song that's stood up to the centuries but is likely to collapse any day now. Sections of crushing funeral doom give way to light and tender parts and both feed into each other. That mansion was clearly loved in its day but it's forgotten now and the saddest part is that nobody will know when it's gone. It's the standout for me and I feel its ache deeply. I especially like the moments when the guitar quietly sets the stage for a ramp up in emphasis, like My Dying Bride used to do.

Once Hamferð have gone there, they're happy to revisit the territory on Glæman, with throbbing staccato guitar notes, incredibly sparse piano and that calm clean voice again, which we know will escalate at some point. I may not hear a lot of possibility in his harsh voice, beyond its texture, but his overall range here is stunning. That's most apparent here on Glæman, because it's the song he stays both clean and calm for longest. The chaotic rumble that begins Í hamferð is a firm reminder of what hasn't happened for the past five minutes and change.

Almost appropriately, Í hamferð, a heavier song in every way, is my second highlight, because it's a firm reminder of the power of that heavier approach. Aldará does his best harsh work on this one and the twin guitars of Theodor Kapnas and Eyðun í Geil Hvannastein bolster up almost into a wall of sound, though this always remains death rather than black. It's almost a storm surrounded by a buffer of utter calm, because Fendreygar starts out that way, but with an ominous beat from Remi Johannesen and a hint of fuzzy guitar that tells us that it's not going to stay there. Damn, this one builds. Highlight number three.

I wasn't planning to run through these tracks in order, but it ended up happening that way. What's left is Hvølja, the heaviest, most rumbly, most funeral doom the album gets, with the heaviest the clean Aldará voice gets, tortured into strange shapes but somehow still clean. There's also a title track to wrap up the album, but that's something completely different than anything thus far. It's an unusual piece, resonant guitarwork that's presumably played on an electric guitar but with the aim of mimicking a folky acoustic guitar. The only other music is the timeless wash of the ocean on the Faroese shore and the spoken voice of an old man telling a story. It's quite the achievement, as I find myself listening carefully every time, even though I don't understand a word he says.

Google Translate tells me that the title is "But God's hand is strong", while Hamferð is a peculiarly Faroese word to describe manifestations of dead or missing seamen. The remoteness of the Faroe Islands infuses this music to its core. It's bleak but rich, harsh but beautiful, crushing but folky. The result is the third album from Hamferð, just over a decade after their first. It's an easy 8/10 for me because it soaked into my soul, but, unlike Angry Metal Guy, it's not my Album of the Year.