Iku-Turso set release date for new album and reveal first track

Purity Through Fire announces June 6th as the international release date for a new mini-album from Iku-Turso, Wolfheart, on CD format. The 12″ vinyl version will follow in the autumn.

Forming in 2017 and soon releasing their debut album, The Great Tower, that same year, Iku-Turso have quietly become a force in the ever-fertile Finnish black metal scene (vocalist Lafawijn hails from the Netherlands). The band includes members with a vast array of underground experience, spanning all sorts of extreme metal styles, and a couple of members currently retain membership in labelmates Order of Nosferat. As such, Iku-Turso‘s sound is far from strict “Finnish black metal” that’s come to be the definition the past couple of decades. Rather, the band cast their gaze back to the cold, dark days of mid ’90s Scandinavia, and render it with a (darkly) dramatic flair.

Renewing their blood pact with Purity Through Fire, which commenced with the equally stout mini-album Ikuinen Kirous in 2023, Iku-Turso return with the aptly titled Wolfheart. Featuring five new songs, the half-hour Wolfheart is prime Iku-Turso: mystical yet nasty, they deliver something akin to a long-lost relic on Wounded Love or Samoth‘s Nocturnal Art Productions. Then again, it’d be unjust to suggest that the Finns are “regressive” or at least “retroactive,” for such aristocratic ugliness can only come from those whose hearts beat with the ancients; Iku-Turso are nothing if not authentic. Still, compared to the orchestral bombast of its mini-length predecessor, Wolfheart is much more of a slow-burn affair despite showing some upticks in tempo (see the also-aptly titled “Gales of Hail”), reveling in the reflective and epic and remaining just as compelling and powerful. Likewise, those hearts here beat with more of a heavy metal flair, not unlike reanimated contemporaries Barathrum, and they bring past to the present with a faithful-yet-Finnish cover of Emperor‘s “Beyond the Great Vast Forest.” Altogether, Wolfheart continues to affirm Iku-Turso‘s standing among modern Finn-BM’s elite.

In the meantime, hear the brand-new track “Pagan Beasts” HERE at Purity Through Fire‘s official YouTube channel. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Iku-Turso’s Wolfheart
1. Pagan Beasts [8:04]
2. Gales Of Hail [5:19]
3. Grizzled Skies [8:40]
4. Midwinter [1:49]
5. Beyond the Great Vast Forest [Emperor cover] [5:54]