2024 was a stellar year for German black metal. Albums from Asarhaddon, Opus Irae, Chaos Invocation, Kanonenfieber, Suffering Souls, Dauþuz, Far Beyond,  Stiriah and Servant were all damn fine releases. But at the tail end of 2024, Mavorim released an album that I never really got to spend too much time with before the year ended, and it’s a shame because it’s one of the better ones of the bunch mentioned above.

The duo that comprises Mavorim (Baptist and Valfor) are a busy couple of chaps with 4 Mavorim albums, 3 Eisenkult albums, and 2 Atronos albums, all since 2020. The last time I covered Mavorim (seemingly the duo’s main project), was 2020s Axis Mundi, but I have enjoyed the 2 albums since, but I felt that the band’s stellar fifth album deserved a review.

Mavorim are wonderfully German in their black metal-ness. Militant, a bit quirky, but masterfully rendered and written with a perfect balance of Black Metal teeth gnashing hostility, some despondency, and slicing melodies, all wrapped up with that aforementioned German quirk.

Arguably the more directly black metal of the duo’s projects rather than the more medieval Atronos and more punky Eisenkult, Mavorim thrives on crystalline, razor-sharp melodic black metal, with enough ‘oomph’ to keep it solidly savage, and never too Shoe-gaze-y or purely atmospheric black metal

After the opening instrumental introductory title track, “Als der Menschheit Wille Brach” shows just how damn good they can be, especially around 2:51 where they unleash a catchy as fuck, swaying, stop-start melody. Then “Zerfall” delivers a punky, sneering main riff and presence with a nifty little medieval/brass bridge to keep things majestically savage.

The early stages of the album are littered with such highlights and killer tracks\riffs whether the mid-paced, stern march blistering melodicism and clean vocals of “Tu’ ich meine Augen zu” or the initial moodiness of “Ein fahles Ross”, before it gets all weird (in a good way) and delivers some cool little haughty black metal gallops.

But as with all four other albums, the band could self-edit a bit, as some of the songs start to get a bit samey towards the album’s back end, and at nearly an hour, it could be a little more concise as the reworked “Traume” (from 2014s Heimkehr  demo), “Alles stirbt” (with a very cool melodic tremolo blast and more clean vocals and 10+ minute largely atmopheric closer, “Der letzten Sonne Untergang” while good tracks, they are just not keeping my attention like the early tracks.

Still, Mavorim remain an underrated German black metal act that is bordering on elite levels of quality and consistency that more people should be listening to.

[Visit the band's website]

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