Thirty fucking years. That’s how long it’s been since Haimad first emerged from the frostbitten heart of Sweden, whispering their symphonic darkness into the underground like a blizzard-borne secret. Three decades since A Dream Vision Vanished, the demo that hinted at something far beyond its time. Then came The Horned Moon, then Majestic — and then, silence. The cold swallowed them.

A brief flicker reappeared in 2019 when the returned momentarily with… well… The Return, but as quickly as they resurfaced, they were gone again beneath the frozen waves.

Until now.

Because after thirty years of shadows and silence, Haimad are about to drop their debut album. And When Night Rode Across the North isn’t just a comeback — it’s a resurrection. A grand and thunderous reminder of what true Melodic and Symphonic Black Metal sounds like when it’s carved straight from the bones of the old gods.

From the first second, the album moves. It doesn’t hesitate, it doesn’t second guess itself, it doesn’t linger — it sweeps across you like an ice storm made flesh. The guitars blaze with frostbitten fury, melodic yet sharp enough to draw blood. The keyboards don’t just accompany — they command, rising and falling like northern winds over frozen peaks. Every riff, every blast beat, every whispered note feels alive, ancient, and hungry.

This is the kind of Black Metal that remembers where it came from — not a museum piece, but a living altar to the cold and the mystical. The melodic sense is sublime, the balance between symphony and savagery absolutely perfect., and what Haimad bring to the table is entirely their own — that Swedish blend of melancholy and might, that sense that beauty and brutality are the same divine force.

Each track unfolds like a saga told around a fire under black skies. Where Serpents Wait in Withering Ruins, The Key to the First and Final Day, When Night Rode Across the North — all burn with the same eternal light, yet none sound the same. There’s scale, there’s power, and above all, there’s feeling. Haimad play from the heart, from the marrow, from the void.

The vocals sound as if they’ve been torn from the lungs of the North itself — raw, regal, and commanding. The drumming stirs the battle cry within your black heart. The entire production carries that old-world atmosphere, the cold precision of early Nordic black metal, but rendered with clarity and reverence. It sounds massive without losing its soul.

This isn’t nostalgia. This is legacy fulfilled. When Night Rode Across the North is the record that Haimad were always destined to make — the culmination of everything that began in those demos all those years ago. It’s triumphant, cold, and utterly spellbinding.

So yes — it was worth the wait. Every single frozen fucking year of it.

And if it takes them another thirty years to release the follow-up, I’ll still be here, 83 years old, covered in corpse paint, throwing the horns and headbanging in my goddamn wheelchair.

When Night Rode Across the North by Haimad is out November 7th via Northern Silence Productions.

CHOICE CUT: Of Smokeless Fire and Smouldering Ash

BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: A monumental return from one of Sweden’s most criminally overlooked forces. When Night Rode Across the North is pure frozen majesty — Symphonic Black Metal as it was meant to be: powerful, emotional, and utterly eternal.

PRESS SOURCE: Cátia C./Against PR.