WELICORUSS Siberian Heathen Horde CD Ltd 1st Edt (2020)

Siberia does not produce gentle music. Welicoruss have been proving that for over a decade, carving out a corner of the symphonic black metal world that sounds less like a Scandinavian forest and more like a steppe that actively wants you dead.

Siberian Heathen Horde is their fourth full-length, recorded in 2019 and released in 2020 on German label GenRec, marking the band's first move to a proper international imprint after years of grinding through the underground. The sound is exactly what the name suggests: orchestral, brutal, rooted in Siberian and Slavic mythology rather than the usual black metal iconography. This is pagan metal with genuine geographic and cultural specificity, which puts it well above the average cloaks-and-fog aesthetic exercise. The digipak limited first edition pressing is the one to own.

CD, limited first edition digipak, 2020 release on GenRec. Genre: symphonic black metal, pagan metal.

Fans of: Batushka, Arkona, Nokturnal Mortum