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Serbian one-man black metal army Niflungar have been around since 2018 with the prerequisite number of splits, demos, and EPs you'd expect from a one-man band, and even had a full-length released a while back. Their latest demo, Nocturnal Hymns of the Moon, is my first exposure to Niflungar, and it's definitely left a good first impression on me.

Despite being ostensibly black metal, I have to say mastermind Koschei Bessmertny's roots are pretty deeply planted in thrash, particularly the nastier side of '80s German thrash like Kreator, and he mixes that with acoustic sections, haunting synth work and the expected black metal snarls to make a work that's reverent to its sources without sounding directly like them. There are only two songs to go off of here, but when they're as good as the addictive opener "Newborn Elder" and the vicious, thrashy 8-minute epic "Vampyre's Downfall," the only real complaint I have is that there isn't more of it. Of course, the point of a demo is to leave you wanting more, and this has done such a good job that I'm definitely going to visit previous releases as I look forward to a new one, and odds are that if you like biting, melodic black metal deeply indebted to the first rumblings of extremity in the '80s, you'll be doing the same after giving this a spin or several.