#progressiveblackmetal — Public Fediverse posts

From operating on the outskirts, Germany’s Firtan now barely need an introduction. Their sweepingly dramatic, folk-infused brand of pagan blackened death has made them an increasingly prominent name in the scene, aided by their consistency in delivering a record nearly every two years since 2018. Despite this pace, the quality has also remained consistently high, with review after review here praising the music’s balance of grace and viciousness, even if opinion has sometimes differed on the magnitude of the flaws. I am now the third AMG incarnation to tackle the band, ready to be carried away on the path to enlightenment Helios charts. Shooting for the moon sun, Firtan project a stratospheric arc that Helios is compelled to describe, but which, if missed, would land the album comfortably amongst the neighbouring stars.

Helios continues the trajectory predecessor Ethos began, dialling up the atmosphere with resonance that bleeds off hanging guitars and prominent violin whose urgent vibrato slips in and out of the forefront. I found myself making frequent favourable comparisons with Amiensus’ recent material in scale and deft interweaving of tremolo, string, synth, clean and harsh vocals, and syncopated rhythms. Correcting previous missteps of sacrificing potency through forced adherence to straightforward second-wave or blackened death strictures, the soundscape cohesively melds the “trv”ly heavy with the truly ethereal with only the shadows of uncertainty. Yet again, there are those parts where Firtan execute a build or dissolve layers of refrains with such brilliance they chase away any possible clouds of doubt. And this time, the sky is all but clear.

Perhaps Helios’ greatest asset is its immersiveness, as it captures both the ecstatic wildness of Marter but with a robust through-line of dovetailing themes and deeper atmospheric layers. Whether songs truly bleed together or transition through a breath of silence is immaterial, so potent has Firtan’s mastery of dramatic composition become. Melodies reference and reinforce one another across the record, shifting into grander (“The Hierophant Way”) or darker (“Ambrosia”) or more uplifting (“Helios”1) versions of a central theme. Duets of male/female cleans rise and fall together with the crescendo and diminuendo of the instrumentation (“Kalika’s Tongue” “Helios”), elements coalesce in escalation as plucks and chimes and violin climb with magnificent grace, then drop out to enveloping stillness (“Solis Currus,” “Ambrosia,” “The Hierophant Way”). Beyond the shared thread, the turbulent aggression maintains a sense of mysticism and pathos in the shared effort and blurred boundaries between acoustic and electric violin and shiveringly smooth resonant strums that punctuate it (“Solis Currus,” “Ascension”). Even when Firtan forego softness entirely, the movements are tinged with a vibrancy, following as natural outbursts of violence, threaded through as they are with the scream of strings and churn of riffs now twisted from their melancholia into adamancy—sometimes resulting in the best riffs of the album (“Wide Open Eye,” “The Form Revealed”).

Thus it’s mainly small things holding Helios back. Despite the skill Firtan display in shaping their compositions and creating an engrossing overall flow, they undermine it a little on the structural side. The closure brought by the epic penultimate track “The Hierophant Way” is slightly weakened by the concluding acoustic “Shadows of a Dawn Unborn,” but then the bonus track cover of Bathory’s “Man of Iron” is brilliant, sounding like something the band might have penned themselves and working as a fine substitute closer. There’s also room to acknowledge the pattern into which most songs fall, where heavy and/or grandiose arrangements drop into some version of stripped-back strums and cleans around the midpoint, before ramping back up. The execution is generally so successful that you’re too immersed to notice—let alone care. And despite being an hour long—longer including the bonus track—Helios practically flies.

Trying to score Helios is challenging but ultimately futile. It represents so magnificent a leap beyond Ethos that it surely touches greatness, and it’s almost impossible not to be swept up in what feels like Firtan’s most immediate and enrapturing album to date. Yet I can understand those for whom its imperfections cast too great a shadow. What you make of Helios is personal, but there’s no doubt it belongs in the celestial spheres of the band’s discography and modern black metal as a whole.

Rating: Great
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: AOP Records
Websites: firtan.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/firtanofficial
Releases Worldwide: October 2nd, 2026

From operating on the outskirts, Germany’s Firtan now barely need an introduction. Their sweepingly dramatic, folk-infused brand of pagan blackened death has made them an increasingly prominent name in the scene, aided by their consistency in delivering a record nearly every two years since 2018. Despite this pace, the quality has also remained consistently high, with review after review here praising the music’s balance of grace and viciousness, even if opinion has sometimes differed on the magnitude of the flaws. I am now the third AMG incarnation to tackle the band, ready to be carried away on the path to enlightenment Helios charts. Shooting for the moon sun, Firtan project a stratospheric arc that Helios is compelled to describe, but which, if missed, would land the album comfortably amongst the neighbouring stars.

Helios continues the trajectory predecessor Ethos began, dialling up the atmosphere with resonance that bleeds off hanging guitars and prominent violin whose urgent vibrato slips in and out of the forefront. I found myself making frequent favourable comparisons with Amiensus’ recent material in scale and deft interweaving of tremolo, string, synth, clean and harsh vocals, and syncopated rhythms. Correcting previous missteps of sacrificing potency through forced adherence to straightforward second-wave or blackened death strictures, the soundscape cohesively melds the “trv”ly heavy with the truly ethereal with only the shadows of uncertainty. Yet again, there are those parts where Firtan execute a build or dissolve layers of refrains with such brilliance they chase away any possible clouds of doubt. And this time, the sky is all but clear.

Perhaps Helios’ greatest asset is its immersiveness, as it captures both the ecstatic wildness of Marter but with a robust through-line of dovetailing themes and deeper atmospheric layers. Whether songs truly bleed together or transition through a breath of silence is immaterial, so potent has Firtan’s mastery of dramatic composition become. Melodies reference and reinforce one another across the record, shifting into grander (“The Hierophant Way”) or darker (“Ambrosia”) or more uplifting (“Helios”1) versions of a central theme. Duets of male/female cleans rise and fall together with the crescendo and diminuendo of the instrumentation (“Kalika’s Tongue” “Helios”), elements coalesce in escalation as plucks and chimes and violin climb with magnificent grace, then drop out to enveloping stillness (“Solis Currus,” “Ambrosia,” “The Hierophant Way”). Beyond the shared thread, the turbulent aggression maintains a sense of mysticism and pathos in the shared effort and blurred boundaries between acoustic and electric violin and shiveringly smooth resonant strums that punctuate it (“Solis Currus,” “Ascension”). Even when Firtan forego softness entirely, the movements are tinged with a vibrancy, following as natural outbursts of violence, threaded through as they are with the scream of strings and churn of riffs now twisted from their melancholia into adamancy—sometimes resulting in the best riffs of the album (“Wide Open Eye,” “The Form Revealed”).

Thus it’s mainly small things holding Helios back. Despite the skill Firtan display in shaping their compositions and creating an engrossing overall flow, they undermine it a little on the structural side. The closure brought by the epic penultimate track “The Hierophant Way” is slightly weakened by the concluding acoustic “Shadows of a Dawn Unborn,” but then the bonus track cover of Bathory’s “Man of Iron” is brilliant, sounding like something the band might have penned themselves and working as a fine substitute closer. There’s also room to acknowledge the pattern into which most songs fall, where heavy and/or grandiose arrangements drop into some version of stripped-back strums and cleans around the midpoint, before ramping back up. The execution is generally so successful that you’re too immersed to notice—let alone care. And despite being an hour long—longer including the bonus track—Helios practically flies.

Trying to score Helios is challenging but ultimately futile. It represents so magnificent a leap beyond Ethos that it surely touches greatness, and it’s almost impossible not to be swept up in what feels like Firtan’s most immediate and enrapturing album to date. Yet I can understand those for whom its imperfections cast too great a shadow. What you make of Helios is personal, but there’s no doubt it belongs in the celestial spheres of the band’s discography and modern black metal as a whole.

Rating: Great
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: AOP Records
Websites: firtan.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/firtanofficial
Releases Worldwide: October 2nd, 2026

From operating on the outskirts, Germany’s Firtan now barely need an introduction. Their sweepingly dramatic, folk-infused brand of pagan blackened death has made them an increasingly prominent name in the scene, aided by their consistency in delivering a record nearly every two years since 2018. Despite this pace, the quality has also remained consistently high, with review after review here praising the music’s balance of grace and viciousness, even if opinion has sometimes differed on the magnitude of the flaws. I am now the third AMG incarnation to tackle the band, ready to be carried away on the path to enlightenment Helios charts. Shooting for the moon sun, Firtan project a stratospheric arc that Helios is compelled to describe, but which, if missed, would land the album comfortably amongst the neighbouring stars.

Helios continues the trajectory predecessor Ethos began, dialling up the atmosphere with resonance that bleeds off hanging guitars and prominent violin whose urgent vibrato slips in and out of the forefront. I found myself making frequent favourable comparisons with Amiensus’ recent material in scale and deft interweaving of tremolo, string, synth, clean and harsh vocals, and syncopated rhythms. Correcting previous missteps of sacrificing potency through forced adherence to straightforward second-wave or blackened death strictures, the soundscape cohesively melds the “trv”ly heavy with the truly ethereal with only the shadows of uncertainty. Yet again, there are those parts where Firtan execute a build or dissolve layers of refrains with such brilliance they chase away any possible clouds of doubt. And this time, the sky is all but clear.

Perhaps Helios’ greatest asset is its immersiveness, as it captures both the ecstatic wildness of Marter but with a robust through-line of dovetailing themes and deeper atmospheric layers. Whether songs truly bleed together or transition through a breath of silence is immaterial, so potent has Firtan’s mastery of dramatic composition become. Melodies reference and reinforce one another across the record, shifting into grander (“The Hierophant Way”) or darker (“Ambrosia”) or more uplifting (“Helios”1) versions of a central theme. Duets of male/female cleans rise and fall together with the crescendo and diminuendo of the instrumentation (“Kalika’s Tongue” “Helios”), elements coalesce in escalation as plucks and chimes and violin climb with magnificent grace, then drop out to enveloping stillness (“Solis Currus,” “Ambrosia,” “The Hierophant Way”). Beyond the shared thread, the turbulent aggression maintains a sense of mysticism and pathos in the shared effort and blurred boundaries between acoustic and electric violin and shiveringly smooth resonant strums that punctuate it (“Solis Currus,” “Ascension”). Even when Firtan forego softness entirely, the movements are tinged with a vibrancy, following as natural outbursts of violence, threaded through as they are with the scream of strings and churn of riffs now twisted from their melancholia into adamancy—sometimes resulting in the best riffs of the album (“Wide Open Eye,” “The Form Revealed”).

Thus it’s mainly small things holding Helios back. Despite the skill Firtan display in shaping their compositions and creating an engrossing overall flow, they undermine it a little on the structural side. The closure brought by the epic penultimate track “The Hierophant Way” is slightly weakened by the concluding acoustic “Shadows of a Dawn Unborn,” but then the bonus track cover of Bathory’s “Man of Iron” is brilliant, sounding like something the band might have penned themselves and working as a fine substitute closer. There’s also room to acknowledge the pattern into which most songs fall, where heavy and/or grandiose arrangements drop into some version of stripped-back strums and cleans around the midpoint, before ramping back up. The execution is generally so successful that you’re too immersed to notice—let alone care. And despite being an hour long—longer including the bonus track—Helios practically flies.

Trying to score Helios is challenging but ultimately futile. It represents so magnificent a leap beyond Ethos that it surely touches greatness, and it’s almost impossible not to be swept up in what feels like Firtan’s most immediate and enrapturing album to date. Yet I can understand those for whom its imperfections cast too great a shadow. What you make of Helios is personal, but there’s no doubt it belongs in the celestial spheres of the band’s discography and modern black metal as a whole.

Rating: Great
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: AOP Records
Websites: firtan.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/firtanofficial
Releases Worldwide: October 2nd, 2026

From operating on the outskirts, Germany’s Firtan now barely need an introduction. Their sweepingly dramatic, folk-infused brand of pagan blackened death has made them an increasingly prominent name in the scene, aided by their consistency in delivering a record nearly every two years since 2018. Despite this pace, the quality has also remained consistently high, with review after review here praising the music’s balance of grace and viciousness, even if opinion has sometimes differed on the magnitude of the flaws. I am now the third AMG incarnation to tackle the band, ready to be carried away on the path to enlightenment Helios charts. Shooting for the moon sun, Firtan project a stratospheric arc that Helios is compelled to describe, but which, if missed, would land the album comfortably amongst the neighbouring stars.

Helios continues the trajectory predecessor Ethos began, dialling up the atmosphere with resonance that bleeds off hanging guitars and prominent violin whose urgent vibrato slips in and out of the forefront. I found myself making frequent favourable comparisons with Amiensus’ recent material in scale and deft interweaving of tremolo, string, synth, clean and harsh vocals, and syncopated rhythms. Correcting previous missteps of sacrificing potency through forced adherence to straightforward second-wave or blackened death strictures, the soundscape cohesively melds the “trv”ly heavy with the truly ethereal with only the shadows of uncertainty. Yet again, there are those parts where Firtan execute a build or dissolve layers of refrains with such brilliance they chase away any possible clouds of doubt. And this time, the sky is all but clear.

Perhaps Helios’ greatest asset is its immersiveness, as it captures both the ecstatic wildness of Marter but with a robust through-line of dovetailing themes and deeper atmospheric layers. Whether songs truly bleed together or transition through a breath of silence is immaterial, so potent has Firtan’s mastery of dramatic composition become. Melodies reference and reinforce one another across the record, shifting into grander (“The Hierophant Way”) or darker (“Ambrosia”) or more uplifting (“Helios”1) versions of a central theme. Duets of male/female cleans rise and fall together with the crescendo and diminuendo of the instrumentation (“Kalika’s Tongue” “Helios”), elements coalesce in escalation as plucks and chimes and violin climb with magnificent grace, then drop out to enveloping stillness (“Solis Currus,” “Ambrosia,” “The Hierophant Way”). Beyond the shared thread, the turbulent aggression maintains a sense of mysticism and pathos in the shared effort and blurred boundaries between acoustic and electric violin and shiveringly smooth resonant strums that punctuate it (“Solis Currus,” “Ascension”). Even when Firtan forego softness entirely, the movements are tinged with a vibrancy, following as natural outbursts of violence, threaded through as they are with the scream of strings and churn of riffs now twisted from their melancholia into adamancy—sometimes resulting in the best riffs of the album (“Wide Open Eye,” “The Form Revealed”).

Thus it’s mainly small things holding Helios back. Despite the skill Firtan display in shaping their compositions and creating an engrossing overall flow, they undermine it a little on the structural side. The closure brought by the epic penultimate track “The Hierophant Way” is slightly weakened by the concluding acoustic “Shadows of a Dawn Unborn,” but then the bonus track cover of Bathory’s “Man of Iron” is brilliant, sounding like something the band might have penned themselves and working as a fine substitute closer. There’s also room to acknowledge the pattern into which most songs fall, where heavy and/or grandiose arrangements drop into some version of stripped-back strums and cleans around the midpoint, before ramping back up. The execution is generally so successful that you’re too immersed to notice—let alone care. And despite being an hour long—longer including the bonus track—Helios practically flies.

Trying to score Helios is challenging but ultimately futile. It represents so magnificent a leap beyond Ethos that it surely touches greatness, and it’s almost impossible not to be swept up in what feels like Firtan’s most immediate and enrapturing album to date. Yet I can understand those for whom its imperfections cast too great a shadow. What you make of Helios is personal, but there’s no doubt it belongs in the celestial spheres of the band’s discography and modern black metal as a whole.

Rating: Great
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: AOP Records
Websites: firtan.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/firtanofficial
Releases Worldwide: October 2nd, 2026