Album & EP Reviews

Runereader – A Frost That Never Thaws EP

Runereader – A Frost That Never Thaws EP
Self – Released 
Release Date: 07/02/25
Running Time: 25:42
Review by Dark Juan
9/10

I am Dark Juan, and it is well known that I am drawn to madness. The more mental something is, the more I like it. Just ask the likes of Bofo Kwo and Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy and my deep and abiding love of their music (Death Metal describing the story of two African cannibals and their adventures through time and space and whatever the fuck happened when the members of the band I will never ever be able to spell without the aid of copy and paste got together respectively…) and it is the same with Runereader, being a single person who appears to be able to read Dark Juan’s mind and transcribe the horrors within to music. However, I am currently replete with a burrito which I have just wolfed down to mitigate against the shock of the £300 I have just had to pay out for new glasses. I need varifocals now, you see, as Old Father Time is starting to catch up with me and I am not as limber and as violently inclined as I used to be, and I CAN’T ACTUALLY SEE SHIT CLOSE UP ANYMORE. Next it will be a job in accounts or something equally boring and cardigans or sports jackets with leather patches on the elbows and a nice pair of fucking cavalry twill trousers or something. 

Just shoot me now, while I still make a beautiful corpse.

Nevertheless, my love of Extreme music has not abated even slightly although it might have diversified a bit, and it is with this in mind that I drag the mighty Platter of Splatter ™ from out of its lair under the stairs in Crow Cottage, tie it the fuck down and sling the latest EP from the mysterious and enigmatic Runereader upon it, entitled “A Frost That Never Thaws”. 

Yet again, it is not what you might expect, considering the last time I listened to this musical project (https://www.ever-metal.com/2024/07/10/runereader-forn-sidr-en-ny-borjan-ep/) I enthused about the weird as fuck amalgam of Black Metal, Suicide-esque Electronic Punk, kids’ knackered Bontempi keyboards and the clear insanity of the person behind the music.

Things have changed a bit. Runereader has increased the Black Metal quotient and now their heavier moments sound like later-era Satyricon cosplaying as early Mayhem. The sound is thick and sticky and cloying instead of the bizarre squishy, squidgy tinkly-bonk whimsicality that permeated “Forn Siðr – En Ny Början” and this makes for a far more focused, vastly more dangerous EP. 

Don’t get me wrong, though, this EP is still madder than a bunch of cloned Mickey McMads overrunning Madsville, Maryland. Runereader is not capable of recording anything that hasn’t got its hands in so many musical candy jars it has got hopped up on 20 different kinds of sweets and is having the adult equivalent of the world’s biggest sugar rush, charging around, screaming, giggling maniacally and smashing shit to bits as soon as it lays its greasy little mitts on it. Take the opening track of this EP, ‘Esteemed Plague Coronation’. Not content with some out and out Satyricon worship welded onto the kind of lo-fi sonic fury that early Venom was capable of, Runereader places, really forward in the mix, a mournful and all-encompassing string motif and then also goes full on Cradle of Filth with an orchestral section over hyperspeed double bass drumming. The guitar work is waspish and razor-edged, and the vocals range from shrieking to cut glass speech. In the same song. This is about the easiest piece of music to describe on this EP because it gets more batshit from here…

The next song is the title track and begins with the aforementioned broken Bontempi sounds over a relaxed tempo that gives you an almost Vaporwave aesthetic which persists throughout the whole song as different keyboard motifs jab and stab throughout the song, Runereader’s sharp and visceral bark cutting through those and the molasses-thick guitar and bass. It gives an image in Dark Juan’s imagination of a fucking massive and really pissed off Kaiju slowly dragging itself out of the LaBrea Tar Pits in California, burning eyes ranging over the miles of shining steel and glass that have sprouted around it in the years of its slumber beneath the black. It is an atmospheric piece that goes from Black Metal to Vaporwave to Post-Punk and yet somehow remains cohesive and almost easy to listen to. Black Synthwave, perhaps? Now there’s a genre to tickle the fancy of the more intrepid listener and no mistake.

‘If The Gods Blessed This Tragic World’ is up next and this is where it gets a little odd, where pseudo-Calypso like sounds at the start of the song meet with wiry, fizzing Black Metal guitars and extreme velocities before it is all dialled back to almost pastoral acoustic guitar and not much else. Until Runereader gets bored with subtlety and instead opts once again for violence. What’s wrong with them? Always with the fucking violence! Until they go back to the pastoral guitar with a sad and mournful little piano line enhancing it, far away in the background. Apart from the Dance keyboards at the end of the song, anyway. And the little bit of Industrial grinding behind the Black Metal. 

Fucking hell, I’m knackered, and there’s still another song to describe… ‘Ghosts Of The Ruins’ begins with a full-on Dance keyboard assault over Black Metal guitars and thankfully the weird tinkly-bonk Bontempi keyboards make an appearance to provide a listenable link to previous work. 

The thing is, Runereader might sound like an appallingly confused mess when I am trying to describe it to you, but it is a weirdly cohesive, massively individual way of making music. Rarely is anything where you expect it to be in the mix and it is this, as well as the, let’s face it, fucking manic set of influences at work here (Black Metal, Synthwave, Dance Music, Industrial and sheer, wide-eyed screaming insanity) make Runereader a fascinating proposition for the listener who likes to chart unforeseen horizons. Dark Juan certainly enjoys being a traveller of never-wandered musical hinterlands. “A Frost That Never Thaws” is a much more complete work than the first Runereader EP and it is why the Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System will be awarding Runereader 9/10 for an EP which maintains the many and varied idiosyncrasies of the first record, but appears to have either a) been able to afford better equipment or b) has toned down the madness because the new meds have taken the edge off his insanity. Dark Juan suspects that it is neither and this EP is merely the product of Runereader’s many psychoses coalescing into a whole new and dangerous personality.

TRACKLISTING:
01. Esteemed Plague Coronation
02. A Frost That Never Thaws
03. If The Gods Blessed This Tragic World
04. Ghosts Of The Ruins

LINE-UP:

No-one knows and that’s probably for the best because the fucker is probably living in a cave in Finnish forest, knocking off all the false Black Metal bands who are wandering it for photo shoots. Although to be fair I am in regular communication with Runereader, and they are jolly nice, but that’s probably only because Dark Juan is as dangerously unstable as they are and predators always treat each other with a bit of respect, don’t they?

Well, that and the fact that Runereader’s debut single was called ‘On Your Battered Altar’ and to Dark Juan’s imagination that sounds rude as fuck and still has me giggling like a schoolgirl every time I read it. The joys of adulthood… Or having reached a half-century and still not grown up yet.

LINKS:

Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.