Hellig Usvart - Impact and Legacy

Impact and Legacy

Hellig Usvart was a seminal, highly influential album for the Christian black metal movement. The album spawned some imitators, especially in South America, with groups such as Poems of Shadows taking apparent influences from Horde's style on their album Nocturnal Blasphemous Chanting. The raging lyrics of anti-satanism would dominate the unblack scene for years. Concerned about that, Erasmus of Son of Man Records asked Sherlock in a 2006 interview: "Do you feel that unblack metal will be able to efficiently continue its response to black metal if it does not grow beyond 'horn crushing'?" Sherlock responded, "No I do not. The lyrics on 'Hellig Usvart' were written 12 years ago. I'm sure that if another Horde album was written today, the themes would be quite different and much more mature, to counteract the poetic and intelligent (albeit misguided) lyrics of modern BM."

After the release magazines such as HM gave Hellig Usvart good reviews, and later critics such as Matt Morrow of The Whipping Post gave the album 10/10, writing "...this album was made more than anything, to make a point. It made that point loud and clear, and it also kicked the door wide open and paved the way for many Christian black metal bands in the future to bring the light of Christ to an extremely dark music scene." In 2010, HM Magazine listed Hellig Usvart #63 on its Top 100 Christian Rock Albums of All Time list stating that it "kicked off a Christocentric infiltration of black metal culture" and it "holds up as a righteously furious assault".