Through it all there’s a palpable, infectious feeling of joy. Yes, joy. And yes, this is a band whose lyrics probably involve a lot of killing and whatnot; among the few English lyrics in the booklet, we find the line “I know not if I shall be here/when the armageddon is to come,/but this axe of war in my hand/means that I am ready for war” and the rather more effective if less immediately clear “I am still the disintegrator./Lucid ultimate pain, dissolver.” But you’d have to be duller than hard tack not to hear the youthful glee with which Horna goes about testing out their weapons for their upcoming battle against Good. On Perima Vihassa Ja Verikostossa, it’s audible in every detail, in every second of the EP’s twenty-minutes-and change; it’s there in the way that the guitarist, returning to his central riff on the song “Verikammari,” attacks the strings like Richie Blackmore suddenly, accidentally finding the “Smoke on the Water” progression, and it’s there in the corny suspense of the slow guitar/bass/drums buildup of the next song, “Ghash Inras.” Something about having less time to accomplish their ends prods Horna into working more economically; every second counts on Perima Vihassa Ja Verikostossa. The chords sound meaner, the bass less incidental. You can’t miss it: it’s joy.
