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Ereb Altor started out with the doomy viking album By Honour, and have shifted their style restlessly ever since, with the last album Gastrike being a full-on Black Metal album, with barely a trace of their older melodic work. This album brings them full circle, getting back to the melodic doom sound while still incorporating the blackened sounds into a newly integrated whole.

This is so totally about Bathory. Even the title is a kind of homage to Blood on Ice, and the style of the riffs here is so closely imitative of Quorthon's Viking period that it's absolutely unmistakable and cannot be an accident. Vocalist Daniel Bryntse even strains his smooth vocal cords to sound more like Quorthon's reedy delivery on classics like Twilight of the Gods. Harsh riffs and vocals are mixed deftly with slower, moodier guitarwork and clean singing. There are parts of this album where you would swear that they just found some lost tracks from the Hammerheart recording sessions - the resemblance is that close.

Lots of bands pay homage to the mighty Bathory - arguably the most influential band in metal since Iron Maiden - and the question has to be whether they do it well or not. On this album Ereb Altor seem less to be bowing down to Bathory and more trying to absorb Quorthon's songwriting ethic whole. They started with a melodic base, but then they went all the way into the black, and now they come out the other side with a nearly perfect blending of the styles Quorthon used through his career, making it into a sound that is almost more Bathory than Bathory. Atmospheric, powerful, and reverent.