Album Review: Brotthogg - Echoes of the Past (2019)

It has been two years since Trondheim's Brotthogg crashed onto this planet with their first EP "The last Traveller". In early August the band around mastermind Kristian Larsen Moen reported back with their first full-length play "Echoes of the Past", and they immediately outmatched all expectations. Brotthogg are back with seven and a bit more than half an hour of high-speed, brutal and melodic Metal.

Drum beats fast as a machine gun, massive like a tank, and precise like a scalpel build the foundation of this beautiful massacre. The soundscape is defined by high-speed staccato riffing, massive and intense harmonies, as well as ice cold and pitch black licks and soli. The growling and deep voices perfectly merge with the rest of Brotthogg's arrangement and create a gloomy, heavy atmosphere. Slower and dragging parts such as in the song 'The Aftermath' do not disturb this picture at all.

Brotthogg put the pedal to the metal for this album. Thus, "Echoes of the Past" has become a beautiful output which will please fans of Dissection, Windir, Emperor, Scar Symmetry, or The Haunted. The combination of Death, Thrash, and Black Metal with Nordic themes has not been conducted that confident and convincing in ages. "Echoes of the Past" by Brotthogg is the reinstallation of faith in heavy, honest and intense Melodic Extreme Metal.