Eïs originally started out more than a decade ago as Geïst, but they decided to drop the first and the last letter in order to avoid a copyright battle with an otherwise insignificant rock band from the US in 2010. The core of the band remains to this day in the duo, Alboin and Albarus, who have now just penned this small two track EP.

In a strangely analogous way to its title, it constitutes a partial return to the northern sounds of their early days from Galeere and Kainsmal in favour of the ‘relatively speaking’ more  accessible sounds of the previous record ‘Bannstein’.

The first offering, the majestically monikered An den Schwarz gesandeten Gestaden starts out quite moody with waves crashing against the shore until it dives headlong into an unrelenting barrage of blastbeats. It’s not all arctic fury though from this Teutonic horde. Soon enough the ice freezes over all the nordic riffs and slows them down to the absolute zero.

The second song Stillstand und Heimkehr, being the title track, is a more restrained effort crafted from hypnotic, Burzumesque dirges. It’s a less labored composition with the same riff repeating over and over again like a mantra. It always seems to veer on the verge of another icy blizzard, yet it keeps postponing its final release until it explodes in an orgy of razor sharp frozen shards.

Release date: February 23, 2018
Label: Prophecy Productions
Tracklist:
1. An den schwarz besandeten Gestaden
2. Stillstand und Heimkehr