• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

It's been a while since I've listened to melodic black metal, or I should say an album in the genre that doesn't sound watered down by the abuse of keyboards or any smooth-sounding instrument or gimmick. Lifehunger certainly has its more melodic passages, like on "One Hundred Years", but even that song is mostly abrasive and "rocking" quite a bit. That's what I like best here: On a backdrop of late 90s/early 2000s fast Scandinavian black metal, Vreid add a lot of thrashy, sometimes heavy metal riffs and melodies that make for a great mix of raw-ish, razor sharp black/thrash/heavy metal that's overall quite catchy. And when your guard is down, they throw some fast-paced, chaotic black metal at you. Even the vocals are quite varied, with the expected black metal shrieks and rasps—mostly easy to decipher—and some clean vocals ("Hello Darkness"), something that would be a turn off if they weren't such a good mix of torture, desperation and melancholy. Bottom line, Vreid convey what you expect from a decent black metal album while rocking your socks off.