Galvornhathol – H-Alpha
Galvornhathol – H-Alpha
Self-Released
Release Date: 21/02/24
Running Time: 21:02
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 9/10
Alright, my old muck spreaders? I am Dark Juan and I write to you from a dim and dreary Yorkshire, complete with drizzle. You know, that fine rain that gets you really wet. If you are from the North, you will understand that previous sentence. If you are in the South of England you are probably frantically calling work to tell them you won’t be in because of the bad weather. It’s bikini weather in the North, meaning that there is not a knife-sharp, freezing wind and it’s only a spot of light rain. Having been on many nights out in Gateshead and Newcastle, one can personally vouch for just how tough Northern women are, having seen many of them navigating sideways snow in hooker heels and dresses that wouldn’t even qualify as an effective pelmet for some curtains, giggling and shrieking all the while.
Dark Juan witnessed this from the warmth of a large goods vehicle he was driving back to Manchester from Coldstream. On that night even Dark Juan was considering wearing his big coat.
Mrs Dark Juan is watching some mad 1974 documentaries on British Cryptids as I write, and currently she is being most excited about the Yorkshire Yeti. Yes, Yorkshire has a rich tradition of cryptids. We have the famed Catbeast, for example, but Dark Juan is personally of the opinion that people just watched my Scouse friend Mikey having a drink in Sowerby Bridge and got confused. Nearly as confused as when Mikey and I were out on a beer run to the local off-licence and witnessed a road accident and proceeded to confound all the onlookers by having a crust punk and a shaven headed biker in full colours climb out of a van, administer first aid to the injured person and sort out the emergency services and then disappear into the night. Well, to the off-licence anyway.
The Platter Of Splatter ™ has been activated and is spinning with gay and carefree abandon. Today’s offering to the mighty Platter is an EP by German Post Metal/Melodeath artist Galvornhathol, entitled “H-Alpha”. Doubtless you will all be wishing to know what H-Alpha is. Dark Juan has you covered rather nicely here – It is a deep-red visible line, the first spectral line in the Balmer series, with a wavelength of 656.281 nm (in air), H-Alpha is still not visible to the naked eye. Its emission can be observed from nebulae and maybe made visible with a dedicated filter and is emitted when an electron falls from a hydrogen atom’s third- to second-lowest energy level. H-Alpha has applications in astronomy where its emission can be observed from emission nebulae and from features in the Sun’s atmosphere, including solar prominences and the chromosphere. Bet you didn’t know Dark Juan knew about spectral space shit, did you? Dark Juan is quivering with excitement as he has read the blurb (which is refreshingly free of silliness claiming that the band will change the world) and Galvornhathol is a band whose view extends beyond the realms of the Earthly, to the Pleiades, to four hundred galaxies being pulled into the area known as the Great Attractor (being a gravitational anomaly in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster, which we can’t actually see because of our own galaxy being inconveniently in the way of it) to massive star nurseries where novae flare and new stars scream into existence in an explosive, fiery glory.
Yes, Galvornhathol, Dark Juan is convinced, know what a Lagrange Point is and how to solve the three-body problem.
This four-track EP opens with ‘The Great Attractor’ and it is a mightily satisfying obsidian slab of Post Metal. C’s vocals are visceral and vital as he howls and screams yet still retains some control over his voice, and the music is just heavier than a galactic supercluster, yet with mournful and affecting melodies swimming just below the surface of pure, unadulterated distortion. It is an affecting track, and the man himself claims that “These [songs] should be left open to the interpretation of the listener, but they have in fact a predefined meaning for each, with the actual lyrics/title being but a metaphor…”
Quite.
‘Virga’ (Being a form of precipitation viewed from a distance) is more of the same, but with an admixture of a touch of Satyricon about the verse (the chiming guitars and Black Metal-esque vocal reminding Dark Juan very much of Satyr and his mob) but with a chorus that could have been written by Bob Mould in his Sugar era. As does the guitar work in the middle part of the song. This sort of thing meets with Dark Juan’s approval greatly. C’s voice runs the full gamut from throat-ripping brutality to a clean howl in the chorus, as the music ebbs and flows and mournful, plaintive keyboards and strings add dimensions and richness to an already very good song. ‘Novae’ is more of the same, using the birth/ death cycles of stars in nebulous areas as a metaphor for life and death on Earth, and it shares the curious humanity behind the obvious violence of Metal. So far, very fucking groovy indeed!
The final song on “H-Alpha” is ‘Pleiades’ and I cannot type that word correctly for shit and therefore have resorted to copying and pasting it. This song is rather less Post-Metal and rather more Melodeath than the previous three, yet it retains the same power and interest for the listener, being intelligently arranged and very well performed.
Which leads me to try to critique the record as a whole. Everything about it is fucking superb, to be honest. It is richly produced and has a clean, accessible sound (C claims that it is Lo-fi, but he is bullshitting us there. Dark Juan has heard records produced by big names that sound much shittier than this one does) and everything is easily discernible. This is even more remarkable than normal bands that I get to review, as Galvornhathol is basically a hobby band for C, who is not a professional musician, and for him to be able to complete a work like this frankly makes a fucking mockery of some more established bands out there.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Das patentierte Blutspritzer-Bewertungssystem von Dark Juan für unsere feine deutsche Leserschaft. Grüße aus Großbritannien!) is really quite enamoured of Galvornhathol and therefore awards 9/10 for an excellent four-tracker that is interesting, original and unique. Marks were taken away because Dark Juan wanted more and was denied. It does not do to deny Dark Juan things.
TRACKLISTING:
01. The Great Attractor
02. Virga
03. Novae
04. Pleiades
LINE-UP:
C – Absolutely fucking everything you hear on this record and his talent makes me sick, considering I can barely string a coherent sentence together in my native language, and he’s done all this in English when he’s German. Chapeau!
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 said party. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
