ICHOR "The Black Raven" Gatefold Digisleeve CD

In 2021 ICHOR and the Black Raven unfurl their wings to cast a blackened shadow over this plague ridden world with the release of their album, ‘Black Raven’. Ichor, featuring the two founding members of Australia’s Nazxul, forge ahead with a decidedly more atmospheric vision that is consciously understated – yet magnificently majestic, vastly epic and utterly timeless! Created with the impassioned sensibility of the 90s scene from which the duo arose, the album is still decidedly modern and engaging. Taking inspiration from Viking era Bathory and the 90’s Pagan Black Metal which these albums inspired. Like these works ‘Black Raven’ is predominantly a brooding mid-paced affair accentuated with flourishes of pomp and might, conveyed with the purposeful clash of keyboards that resonate like a bombastic call to battle. An alluring sense of haunting magic also emerges from within the album with subtle strains of folk melody, acoustic passages and an underlying ambience. ‘Black Raven’ builds to peaks of rewarding grandeur with its insidiously grim aura and layers of melancholic melody. Thematically the music comes to life, animated with the breath of ancient memory and a sense of primal mystery, invoking the dark forests and ice peaked mountainous sublimity of Eastern Europe from which the founders of Ichor claim their heritage. The link with this land as a spiritual home, inhabited by the presence of the ancient Slavic Gods and spirits is key to the music of Ichor as they weave tales of dark Slavic magic, witchcraft and folklore. It is the call of the winds, the trees, the mountains and the rivers to the soul; the voices of the ancient Gods and echoes of the past resonating from the ether of time to weave its dark magic. https://youtu.be/VVvOKkD6ygs