Review Nordlys "Lichtglanz Finsternis"

So here it is, the long-awaited debut album from Nordlys, more than 30 years after the band was formed. But that doesn't mean anything; the greatest bands, such as Eternal Darkness from Sweden, took a similar amount of time to release their debut album, and Sadistic Intent still haven't managed to release an album to this day...

But I digress. Nordlys from Memmingen in Bavaria (which seems to be a real metal stronghold, especially in relation to the modest size of the city; just think of Nekrovault, Sacroscum, Khaos, and Niht, even though these bands are all based more or less on a core group of musicians), started out under the name Fjell, were called Pest and Die Schwarze Wut in the meantime, and never made it into the spotlight of the black metal underground like Lunar Aurora, Nagelfar, Secrets of the Moon, or Desaster.

INTERVIEW MIGHTIEST

"Especially the pre-concert evening we planned in a Freiburg brewery was a sensational meeting. A bunch of middle-aged men babbled about the bad old days over a few beers....genius!"
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Mightiest from Freiburg in the legendary Black Forest was founded in 1994 and I always liked the melodic-symphonic aspect of the band, which never became cheesy, which was often the case with many bands in the past. That is a kind of unique selling point, to play melodic-symphonic black metal, which is still rough, hard and unpolished. I can think of Emperor, with whom the band was often compared in the reviews of "Recreation of the shadowlands". Of course in the early interviews Burzum, Darkthrone and Mayhem were mentioned as influences, the early Dimmu Borgir with "For all Tid" or "Stormblast" certainly didn't pass the band without leaving traces, I think.

INTERVIEW NORDLYS

"Of course the glory old days are great to remember, it was a really magic time when the whole Black Metal thing started in the early nineties, musically and spiritually. " (A. /Nordlys)

When I heard about the fact about the re-creation of an gig which took place 20 years ago including NORDLYS, LUNAR AURORA, NAGELFAR and MIGHTIEST I decided that I had to visit this, even if I and my attendance had to travel to Freiburg / Black Forest, Southern Germany. For the first time I visited the "Crash"-Club, the dark vault cellar is predestined for black metal gigs. LUNAR AURORA and NAGELFAR  ceased to exist, so the line up was completed by KERMANIA and a project band called WELTENGÄNGER (named after LUNAR AURORAs debut album). The concert itself was a great experience (here you can see some pictures published by the local news portal), so some months after I decided to do an interview with A. from NORDLYS.

First of all: how did you experience The „Past is alive“ concert at the Crash in Freiburg with MIGHTIEST, KERMANIA and WELTENGÄNGER ? In my opinion (and my attencance felt the same) NORDLYS was the „strongest“ band on this evening. And how exactly did the idea of took shape, who had the inital idea ?

It was a great event and experience, we really appreciated the effort the guys from Mightiest, especially Oliver, put into making this possible and as enjoyable as possible, not only the gig itself but also everything around it. The initial idea came from Mightiest to re-create an event that I had organized 20 years ago in Bad Wörishofen with Lunar Aurora, Nagelfar, Mightiest and us. First plans were simply to meet up after all this years but the whole thing turned out a bit bigger. Great to hear you enjoyed the performance, it went surprisingly well in regard of us meeting up for rehearsing only a couple of times before the gig.