Chelmno – Horizon of Events (2010)

Hailing from Italy, today we have Chelmno and their primitive raw Black Metal. In “Horizon of Events” this Italian beast of a band presents us with 37 minutes of pure Black Metal, something that only a few bands can pull off these days. With high similarity to Mayhem, Clandestine Ablaze, older Darkthrone, Horna, etc, the members of Chelmno are very effective in creating an abrasive sound that will blow you away.

Like a furious storm in the sea, Chelmno comes at us (and our ears) with waves of crushing BM riffs that are greatly aided by the rawness of the production, making them sound primitive and extremely brutal, just like daddy ordered. While the band’s approach to the genre is nothing revolutionary, if you are a fan of music this raw and this fast, you will never complain about the 8 tracks of destruction packed in this release.

After a weird intro as part of the song “The Lament from the Horizon of Events”, the band quickly sets the furious pace they will maintain for the first four tracks of this release. In these songs, we get a wide variety of raw riffs, brutal drumming (courtesy of Vidharr from Tenebrae in Perpetuum), and hellish shrieks that will rattle anybody on their seat. The band shows no mercy and blasts through the songs like the old greats of Black Metal have done in the past, with the primitive sounding production and all.

It’s not until “Into the Fog” that we get to listen to a ‘slower’ version of the band. In this song we get the feeling of Darkthrone in their “A Blaze in the Northern Sky” era. While most of the album might seem monotonous to some, we think that this is exactly how it should be. And with tracks like “Into the Fog” is nice to see that Chelmno is not only a one trick-pony kind of band.

To close the album we have another three hyper brutal and super raw tracks that blow anything that most bands come up with under the water and set Chelmno high up with Horna and Avsky as one of the best real Black Metal bands with an old-school feeling to them.

Generally speaking, we have pretty solid riffing, tight drumming and hellish screams, all the elements of the near perfect Black Metal sound from the past. With “Horizon of Events”, we expect Chelmno to get noticed and hopefully be able to keep releasing such crushing albums.

Release: April 14th, 2010

Country: Italy