It has been about three years since Valdur issued their self-titled full-length release, but in the process, the band has issued a great deal of split releases to make up for the lost time. Finally, we are given the follow-up album to their debut, titled Raven God Amongst Us, and it's has been well worth the wait. Raven God Amongst Us proves to be an energetic, angry sounding album that has a heavy Pagan sound added to the hard hitting traditional Black Metal sound the band plays, leaving the listener attentive from start to finish.
Valdur essentially waste no time with this recording, as "Intro" sounds like a crack of thunder that echoes out, or sounds of something being destroyed, like a wall during war or something along those lines, coming to a total time span of less then thirty seconds before "Wound Fires in the Afterlife" kicks in with it's fast paced drumming and angry sounding guitars that keep the pace well. The production of the album has a rather hollow, raw sound to it that simply screams properly done cult Black Metal. The vocals wind up being far enough in the mix that they still stand out and aren't downed out by the echoing drumming and the typical distortion of the guitars. The only time on the album that this winds up hindering anything is during "Gravlagt I Morkets Natt!" prior to the guitar solo, which sounds a bit empty due to the music, almost as if there is no bass being played at all due to some higher pitched guitar chords that do wind up drowning things out momentarily.
Each track on this release is just solid Black Metal that either comes at you with a fast, furious pace, or sometimes in a slower, haunting speed. "Med Fjell I Horisonten" is one of those few slower songs, and it really showcases the band's Pagan musical aspects well. The song is of a much slower nature, and acts almost as an instrumental, but features some deeper harmonized chanting type of vocal work throughout the album. This song, however, is easily the slowest one available. "Past of Wolves" does bring the pace of the album down once more for another rather haunting track, but as the song progresses it does pick back up in speed to a faster pace, but the problem here is that it didn't really need to change things up like that. "Past of Wolves" is one of the grimmest sounding cuts off this release, and when it picks up, that grim feeling is replaced once again with the more angry side of the band, which is just as nice, but winds up pulling away from a sound that really stands out on this release for those faster passages. Of course, the closing track "Creation" boasts a good amount of that same haunting atmosphere throughout the song, closing on what sounds like an explosion and effects from what could be sounds from a war with things being destroyed, such as walls, but is also the same sound that rang the album in on "Intro", so it unfortunately fits, but is nothing new unless you skipped that track. These closing sound effects don't take up much of the track at the very end, and fade out nicely for a short conclusion that works well with the album overall.
Raven God Amongst Us really has no faults. Vocally, the echo used on the vocals, especially the deeper-than-normal gutterals that appear throughout the recording in some of the slower bridges, works well in the recording to enhance the haunting music, and the faster tracks here give off some fury from the band, though don't quite make the most impressive tracks as that same haunting vibe seems to be hidden, relying solely on that said vocal style to create the atmosphere. Aside that, Raven God Amongst Us is a great album that listeners will come back to again and again over time due to it's solid song writing and lack of repetition in the songs, making for a strong follow-up full-length offering from Valdur.
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