Cold Spring just reissued two of Folkstorm's out of print albums this spring, which has been cause for much rejoicing around the C-Blast shop. A solo project from Nordvargr that was active through the late 90's through the beginning of the decade, Folkstorm picked up in some ways where his previous band MZ.412 left off, taking a brutally heavy mix of death industrial and power electronics and infusing it with a very subtle black metal undercurrent. This resulted in a handful of albums under the Folkstorm name that have gone one to become some of my favorite black-industrial albums, each one super harsh and evil sounding, with trace levels of black metal guitar buried beneath vicious waves of electronic chaos. Some of this stuff even reminds me of the more noise/industrial leaning Abruptum material, though there is no denying that the Folkstorm is firmly rooted in the power electronics aesthetic. Both 2000's Victory Or Death and 2004's Sweden have been reissued by Cold Spring, and both are highly recommended if yer into extreme, intensely evil blackened PE.

The earlier of these two reissues, 2001's Victory Or Death invokes the blackened, corrosive heaviness of Nordvargr's industrial tendencies in a big way. The ten tracks are formed from samples of wartime speeches, blasting treble-heavy harsh noise, Nordvargr's distorted growling vocals, hammering distorted rhythms that at times almost sound like overmodulated gabber beats, or thunderous drum loops so maxed out and noise-laden that the rhythm is barely even discernable. "Feldgeschrei" sounds like a fucked up militant Nasenbluten track, a jackhammer pulse that's gradually layered with noise and rumbling subsonics. "Epilogue 3" combines heavy tribal percussion and gutteral chanting in a brief 30 second splurt. The track "Harsh Dicipline" starts off with another fast gabber-like throb, but quickly morphs into something much more evil as severely distorted demonic vocals, samples of military speeches and ultra-CRUSHING noise cave in on the rhythmic pulse. Elsewhere, juddering percussive samples seem to warp the sound of machine gun fire into bizarre tribal rhythms, old wartime radio broadcasts and traditional songs occasionally break through in fragments through the chaos, and dense isolationist powerdrone seeps up from caustic electronic grit. This is really extreme stuff, and the mix of military/wartime ambience, blackened nihilism, and grinding industrial makes sense when you think about how this project bridged the pioneering death industrial/black metal hybrid of MZ.412 and the more atmospheric industrial ambience of Toroidh. Folkstorm, however, has always remained one of his heaviest and most merciless projects, crushing and relentless and at the same time mesmerizing and majestic.

This new version comes with slightly modified artwork, and the tracks have all been remastered for maximum aural power. Absolutely essential for fans of Nordvargr's work.