Bolthorn are a band from Italy that plays a mixture of viking and melodic blackened death metal and this is a review of their 2018 album "Across the Human Path" which was released as a joint effort between Broken Bones Records and Envenomed Music.
Battle sounds start off the album along with some nature sounds and epic sounding synths a few seconds later while spoken word parts are also used briefly before going into more of a heavier and melodic musical direction which also introduces death metal growls onto the recording and the music also has a lot of Swedish influences.
When clean vocals are utilized they give the music more of a pagan metal feeling while the solos and leads are also done in a melodic style along with the screams also adding in a touch of black metal as well as all of the musical instruments having a very powerful sound to them.
When the music speeds up a great amount of blast beats can also be heard while the songs also bring in a great mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts along with synths and spoken word parts also return in certain sections of the recording and as the album progresses a brief use of clean playing can also be heard and a couple of the tracks are very long and epic in length.
Bolthorn plays a musical style that takes viking, black and melodic death metal and mixes them together to create a sound of their own, the production sounds very professional for being a self released recording while the lyrics cover Norse Paganism themes.
In my opinion Bolthorn are a very great sounding mixture of viking and melodic death metal and if you are a fan of those musical genres, you should check out this band. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Sentinel" "Thor" and "The Lair of The Beast". 8 out of 10.
https://youtu.be/K9gnP7dbhjs