Band:	Hamferð
Album:	Men Gu​ð​s Hond Er Sterk
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	March 22, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Ábær
02. Rikin
03. Marrusorg
04. Glæman
05. Í Hamferð
06. Fendreygar
07. Hvølja
08. Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk

After being lost at sea for years, an apparition, dripping wet, shows up at your door.

Has it really been six years since Támsins Likam? Somehow it didn't feel like that, and it can't just be my distorted feeling of time passing and the fact that a global pandemic happened in between them, for some reason even without actually releasing anything, Hamferð still felt like they had a presence. Maybe it's just due to having seen them more than once since that album's release and maybe it's because how vocalist Jón Aldará also found himself fronting one of the most acclaimed full-length debuts with Iotunn's Access All Worlds. Granted that was in 2021 and enough time has passed since that one as well, and from that one other band Aldará fronts, since Barren Earth's A Complex Of Cages was also released back in 2018 alongside Támsins Likam. Having covered all three of the aforementioned albums I guess it makes sense why I was excited for something new from this camp, but also why all of them kinda became displaced temporally in my mind. Not like Hamferð ever hurried with their release schedule.

Time passing aside, what seems to set Men Gu​ð​s Hond Er Sterk apart is that the band favored recording live in studio as a band, which is also something that ties to how they have been active as a live outfit in the time since the last album. There may have been some lineup changes, including a return of an old member and the introduction of a new one, but it's clear that the current lineup has had plenty of opportunities to get the live experience and the chemistry needed to make an album recorded this way sound organic and tight. And just like the previous album, Men Gu​ð​s Hond Er Sterk is also an album with a strong narrative focus. With the strong language barrier, it's hard to figure out what that narrative side is about without reading the album's promo or reading interviews, but that feeling seeps into the album nonetheless. It's not necessary to know anything about the whaling accident that serves as real life inspiration, you can feel the descent into the tragic but the hope and survival that endure to the end. "But God's hand is strong" said one of the survivors, and that serves as the album's title.

I've already praised Aldará's voice and performance many times before, and as much as I'd hate repeating myself just to point out an album's obvious highlight, the album wouldn't be half as emotionally resonant even through the language barrier without him. But I also feel like the songwriting is a bit more dynamic this time around, the slower parts are slower, the faster parts, sparse as they are, feel more well developed, and the heaviness feels gargantuan when it arrives. Case in point, the album's tragic apex comes in the second-to-last song, "Hvølja", which throws all the heaviness of funeral death doom at your face complete with some sound effects that sound very reminiscent of mortars falling, before ending with a mellow mood setter complete with a sampled spoken word in the closing title track to really drive the narrative point home.

With a great flow and a great organic sound to go with it to make the listening experience is smooth as can be, Men Gu​ð​s Hond Er Sterk finds Hamferð capitalizing on their strengths as performing band and storytellers through and beyond language.