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With the genre tag medieval metal, I was almost certain I'd be getting some silly dance-y folk, but this turned out to be a very unexpected and nice surprise from these Swedes. Apocalypse Orchestra play doom metal in the vein of Ereb Altor and Isole draped in epic Bathory-isms, and with a very distinct folk undertone that reminds me of Tyr and Moonsorrow. The kicker is the prominent use of folk instruments such as the mandola, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, and appealing choral arrangements, that are never used in an excessive, tiresome way, as some bands tend to do when they have run out of ideas.

The songs are massive, with slow, heavy riffing and punishing drums stomping at a slow march for up to nine or so minutes. They are laced with the abovementioned folk instrumentation, either as part of the backbone proper, or as lead instruments, providing melodic thrills that work surprisingly well with this kind of music. Erik Larsson has a voice that fits this music perfectly, sounding like a mix of Daniel Bryntse (Ereb Altor) and Heri Joensen (Tyr), soaring and towering.

"Anchorhold" is a prime example of Apocalypse Orchestra at their best, where the folk instruments are dominant, but never at the expense of heaviness provided by the guitars and rhythm section. "From the Athanor," on the other hand, is more traditional in the sense that the folk instruments are kept in the background for big chunks of the song, where the band show that they are perfectly capable of writing good doom without overreliance on what makes them unique. The one drawback is that the songs tend to blend ever so slightly together. Not because the songs themselves are boring, but rather because the tempo hardly shifts between songs. This makes an album duration of just shy of an hour pretty ambitious. But that just means that, while I think that skipping one or two songs would make this album stand out even more, it is really really hard not to be spellbound by it.