Well, here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Öröklét by WitcheR is a Black Metal album that puts beauty before blast-beats. That paints a sonic landscape that soars and swoops like a goddamn eagle. That makes my heart ache for rolling hills, moonlit fields, and the boundless, sacred freedom of the forest. It is, quite frankly, a majestic work of breathtaking artistic grandeur—one that blends Atmospheric and Symphonic Black Metal so seamlessly it feels almost elemental.
The Hungarian duo behind WitcheR have managed to achieve a feat that many in the symphonic subgenre attempt but few execute with such purity: they have created an album where the ‘symphonic’ elements are not merely ornamental frosting on a stale riff-cake, but the very structural foundation of the darkness. Öröklét translates roughly to “Eternity” or “Eternal Life,” and the music delivers on this promise, creating a sound that feels simultaneously ancient and timeless, capable of outlasting the current age.
Don’t get me wrong—when Öröklét decides to go, it fucking goes. The duo are no strangers to ferocity; the foundation is built on the cold, serrated edge of true Black Metal fury. But they never compromise their expansive vision for raw, aimless aggression. Instead, they wield restraint as a weapon—and it is a terrifyingly effective one. They know when to hold back the torrent, letting melodies breathe and resonate in the resulting silence.
This calculated precision is what gives the album its immense dynamic power. The guitar parts are sharp, frigid lines, but they are consistently countered and softened by sweeping synth-strings and the crystalline shimmer of piano work. This is key; it’s not an afterthought, but the emotional anchor beneath the storm. This allows the songs to unfurl like dark, immense wings over ancient lands, granting the listener the perspective of a bird of prey looking down on the sacred earth below.
There’s something transcendent about what WitcheR have created here. The symphonic passages don’t feel ornamental; they feel absolutely essential. The orchestral layers are woven so deeply into the fabric of the tremolo riffs that removing them would leave the compositions incomplete—hollow shells where monuments once stood. Every note feels earned. Every crescendo feels like a revelation. When the full force of the band hits—the drums thunder, the guitars blaze—the haunting sense of grandeur reigns supreme.
This balance elevates the music from simple genre exercise to cinematic, spiritual experience. Tracks like Örökség and Röghöz kötött possess the dramatic scope of a film score written for a forgotten epic, charting battles fought on windswept peaks and sorrow endured under endless skies. The vocals, a piercing, distant shriek, act as the narration, less a voice of hatred and more the sound of a spirit crying out across vast, inhospitable landscapes. They are the sound of the eternal night, not as a source of terror, but as a space of profound, sacred beauty.
Few records this year have managed to capture that perfect, difficult balance between elegance and extremity so completely. Öröklét feels intensely alive—spiritual, cinematic, and deeply human in its awe of the cosmic and the natural world. It is a work of true elemental synthesis, marrying the raw aggression of fire and ice with the soaring ambition of the air and the deep roots of the earth.
This isn’t an album content to simply scream into the void; it chooses to sing to the stars. It offers the listener an escape not through distraction, but through immersion into a world far grander and more unforgiving than our own. It reminds us that there is a sacred, timeless power in the cold vastness, and that Black Metal, when wielded with vision and restraint, remains one of the most potent vehicles for delivering true artistic majesty. To listen is to be swept away, to feel the chilling wind of ancient Hungary on your face, and to understand that the sublime and the savage are not two things, but one.
Öröklét by WitcheR is available now via Filosofem Records.
CHOICE CUT: Szélhozó
BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: Öröklét is a revelation — an album that proves Black Metal can still be savage and sublime in the same breath. WitcheR have carved a monument to transcendence, and if this is what eternity sounds like, then may it never end.
