Artist: Occult Mountain
Country: USA
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Digital Demo
Year: 2025
‘Wolven Dawn’ is the third demo from this American one-man band in only a matter of weeks, in three months, to be exact. With the previous two demos, all of them being released digitally only, Fallen Warrior showed his penchant for rather obscure and atmospheric Black Metal. Raw in nature, but with a great sense of nostalgic ambiance that harkened back to the Black Metal demos of the late 90’s and early 00’s. Both demos had, at least to a certain degree, the keyboards as a key instrument, yet with ‘Wolven Dawn’ that seems to have changed.
The opening intro is still very much a keyboard-driven piece that, with a little goodwill, could pass for dungeon synth. But, together with the outro that’s basically the only three minutes the keyboards really take centre stage. ‘Wolven Dawn’ is a riff-laden and powerful traditional Black Metal affair. The previous two demos had a wintery theme on the cover and this one is no exception, yet it is this latest demo that seems truly rooted in that classic snow-and-ice sort of Black Metal. The cover doesn’t only resemble the many others from some three decades ago depicting wolves in the snow, but it also mimics the musical identity of such records. Take those classic records from Spanish Nazgul, ‘Wolven Dawn’ doesn’t sound too different from those. Fast, yet very memorable due to rather catchy riffs and a cold and dense production.
In that sense, ‘Wolven Dawn’ isn’t much different from Occult Mountain’s previous output, all of them are rather nostalgic and refer to days long gone, yet this is a significantly other kind of beast, or yeti if you will. I definitely loved ‘Winter Invocations’, Occult Mountain’s first offerings, but that was mostly due to a certain clunky charm. ‘Wolven Dawn’, however, is an obvious step in quality. Not just because this is a “more Black Metal” recording, but with its suspenseful song writing and first class riffing this is a far more mature demo than the previous two combined.
