This is where hope comes to die and Attan is its executioner. Spawning from a place where sunlight doesn’t exist for six months of the year, Attan are a darkened force of thick pure aggression who dance with calamity. The five-piece have been building to this moment since they unleashed their rabid EP From Nothing back in 2015. Stretching out the agonising gut-punch that EP dealt out would be a difficult hurdle to overcome. Three years later, enter End Of, their carnivorous and agonising debut album that’s going to have us sleeping with the light on for weeks.
Kicking off their 2018 with a support slot for Conjurer at London’s Black Heart, this was our only chance to really start piecing together what these towering Norwegians had in store. All we can say is that it left an impression that showed little light at the end of the tunnel, leaving us in the dark to wonder what horrific beast lurked in the abyss; biding its time. Since then, the emergence of blackened hardcore has only grown all without a leading example to spearhead this sound further. Until now. If we were to mark the year zero of this genre, End Of is it.
Making itself known in the first three tracks, ‘The Burning Bush Will Not Be Televised’, ‘Feed The Primates’ and ‘On Hands And Knees’ are the manifested nightmares of Mastodon’s Remission. In true hardcore fashion, the pain is relentless throughout. The gruff despairing cries of vocalist Remi Langseth border on insanity that desperately scratch out our eardrums from that explosive beginning to the lingering end. By the time End Of gives us breathing space the damage is done and has spit us back out. Its harsh landscape makes for a hard trek which takes you through all the shades of darkness and brutality to feed a starving army of orcs.
Not outstaying it’s welcome, any doubts that their sound would be tamer on a full-length LP are put to bed. Barely a track goes by that doesn’t want to tear you apart on what has to be one of 2018’s most intense records.
End Of. is out now via Fysisk Format.
