Setherial – Hell Eternal (Re-release)

Hell Eternal, for those of you familiar with the early to late ninteties Black Metal scene in Sweden will no doubt be a name you have heard before – Being, as it is, the third release of the (at the time) quintet of musicians hell-bent on proving that the Second Wave has not passed through their country unnoticed. As such, the record is exactly what you would expect from the region and era: Repentless blast beats, greatly distorted string instrument and a menacing growl sputing litanies of blasphemy proving a surge of darkness and death across the world. 

Now, after having given this re-release a spin it quickly became clear to be that this is yet another of those bands that is just up my alley yet I somehow managed to miss entirely. They are quite favourably compared to both their kinsmen Marduk and Dark Funeral, as well as their neighbouring Tsjuder and 1349; All four of which are mastodonts of the genre in this day and age, nearly thirty years after their chosen genre fully took root. And personally, I find that I prefer the restless undercurrent of Setherial to that of both Marduk and Dark Funeral, seeing as their overall approach is just a tad more chaotic than either of their kinsmen. As such, Hell Eternal, to me, is forty minutes of pure unadulterated energy made manifest through physical media, ready for consumption at any given moment. And while I certainly regret not stumbling across this band earlier, I do appreciate the Darkness Shall Rise label for giving me a chance to add it to my collection literal decades after its initial release. 

Now, as for the more detail-oriented part: Does this album provide anything new to the world? By its very definition no, being a re-release of a nearly thirty years old record. This, sadly does prompt me to give it a slightly lower rating than I normally would, due to unspecified technicalities. 

Does the album still hold up? Absolutely. I was positively reminded of the first time I gave 1349’s Hellfire a spin – Same energy, same relentless aggression, same piece of my life from all those years ago returning to the surface. And while I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a Black Metal classic, the seven songs present upon the album was well-received back in the day for a reason, and I would urge any connoisseurs of the genre to either revisit it or, like me, experience it for the first time if you for whatever reason missed it back when it was a current release. 

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