Coldbound – Rites Under Moonlight (2015)

Hailing from Finland, today we have one man demolition machine Coldbound and its latest release “Rites Under Moonlight”. Featuring 10 tracks and over 50 minutes of hauntingly aggressive and atmospheric music, this release crushes the opposition with gut-wrenching shrieks and the perfect balance of raw brutality with melodic/atmospheric creepiness.

After the typical intro, we are left with the throbbing bass guitar line of “Fullmoon Delirium” and its very sinister BM-infused riffing. As the band delivers the atmospheric creepiness of tracks like “Origins of Black Sun” and “Fullmoon Delirium”, we are quite impressed with Råbjørn’s ability to switch between BM, Doom, and purely atmospheric passages in as seamless manner. Another great example of this is the blistering “Devil's Universe”.

Fully exploiting his hellish shrieks, tracks like “Ice Cold” Part I and II will surely creep your neighbors out while delivering some solid melodic riffs. While the recording quality perfectly captures the rawness behind the music, the only gripe we have with it is that the drums sound a bit uneven through this release. The rest of the elements are quite well balanced to produce a very thick and crushing aural experience.

Closing with the darkness of “Rites Under Moonlight”, we are left with a great amount of respect and future expectations for Coldbound. This outfit has a great amount of potential and music creativity that can only get better with time. We highly recommend this release to any fan of music that is not afraid to experiment with multiple genres while keeping a solid core of raw Black Metal.

Label: Black Lion Records

Release: November 10th, 2015

Genre: Atmospheric Black/Doom Metal

Country: Finland