Artist: Haavrun
Country: Bulgaria
Label: Caligo Arcanum Productions / Hellvetic Carnage Productions
Formats: Demo Tape
Year: 2026
With ‘Total Demolition Of Feeble Souls’, the Bulgarian band Haavrun have now released their third demo tape. It’s always an exciting moment, because with the mercurial man behind this band, Todorac, you can never be quite sure what to expect. Black Metal, that much is certain, but with him you never know which label his work will be released on, or even which band name he’ll be using. What’s more, the line-up is never known in advance and you never know when he’ll come up with something new. Not everything in life has to be so predictable, of course; a bit of eccentricity makes it all the more fun.
As far as I am concerned this third demo tape is still recorded with the same line-up as the previous one, ‘Ensigns Of Evil’ (2025), meaning himself, Todorac, being responsible for all instruments and Nordsoldat taking care of both the lyrics and vocals. Nordsoldat replaced Lycanthropus with whom Todorac founded the band in 2024 and released the band’s debut demo tape ‘Transcendental Eclipse Of Inner Darkness’. Yet, it seems the next demo will be with yet another vocalist, as it looks like Nordsoldat is no longer part of Haavrun. So: you never know what’s going on in the Todorac’s world.
But, this third demo was realised and released digitally through Todorac’s own Hellvetic Carnage Productions (an imprint that he changed the name of more than once as well) and on cassette tape through the Mexican underground Black Metal label Caligo Arcanum Productions. Something that actually adds to the mystique of the project, because the demo is rather hard to obtain from the old continent.
On a musical level, Haavrun kept rather close to their original choice of Black Metal style, namely raw and lo-fi-inspired. But, it is clear that ‘Total Demolition Of Feeble Souls’ is their rawest and most lo-fi sounding effort so far. You have to crank up the volume quite a bit and need to spin the demo a couple of times in order to be able to fully wrap your head and ears around it. Not only because the production is significantly more harsh in nature, but also because the demo is split in two sections. The first is on side A and has actual song titles with the addition of “Session I”, the B-side has the same amount of tracks but each of them is untitled and seemingly recorded in different sessions.
That, by itself, might cause some inconsistency or a certain lack of coherence, but, surprisingly, that is not so much the case. The full playing time of about half an hour, 15 minutes each side, the music keeps the same level of rawness and, most importantly, the same level of high quality Raw Black Metal. People who are familiar with Todorac’s other/previous output with bands like Smyrtonos and Opiumortem will acknowledge his sense for memorable riffs and enthralling atmosphere. ‘Total Demolition Of Feeble Souls’ is no exception and fits seamlessly to his discography. In particular, the combination of raw, hate-fuelled Black Metal with the intriguing use of keyboards is something that demonstrates his flair for song writing.
