Some musical encounters begin with a discovery. Others begin long before the first note is played.
My journey to HJARTA does not begin today.
Søren Sol Koldsen-Zederkof has already crossed the pages of my reviews around the world, and on Nordavind through LOS. Maunah itself had already visited us with Heimaland, in 2025. On that occasion, I found a band that seemed to carry something far greater than those three tracks could contain. There was weight, melancholy, a strange feeling that the guitars were not describing a landscape, but carrying its temperature — and, above all, the impression that our first encounter was merely a door left ajar.
I ended that review by calling Maunah a diamond in the making.
Now they are back.
And perhaps the most dangerous part of encountering a band again is discovering that they took seriously what they had promised.
HJARTA does not arrive to repeat Heimaland. Nor does it seem interested in proving that Maunah has grown simply because there is now a full-length album. What we find here is more interesting: a band that seems to have understood its own language more deeply and decided to speak louder, deeper, and with far less fear of letting silence take part in the conversation.
Six tracks.
Just over forty-one minutes.
And there is an almost indecent amount of space within them.
Space for doom to expand without haste. For folk to slip through the cracks. For modern metal to introduce strength without crushing the atmosphere. For monumental guitars that know when to pull back. For drums that do not merely keep time, but guide the music through different states of consciousness.
And then there is Søren.
But not the Søren we encountered in LOS.
Or perhaps it is precisely him — simply seen through another landscape.
His voice still carries that ritualistic, ancestral quality, but here it encounters a different creature. In HJARTA, it does not necessarily need to tell us something. It seems intent on making us feel before we can understand.
Words cease to be boundaries.
Timbre becomes language.
Maunah’s vocal language works through sound, emotion, and cadence, allowing the voice to inhabit the composition almost as an entity of its own, without ever detaching itself from the instrumental organism.
Perhaps that is why HJARTA feels less like an album you listen to and more like a place you enter.
And places require time.
The band itself evokes images of despair and open skies, leaves crushed beneath one’s feet, cold passing through the forest floor, sunlight warming the skin, and air filling the lungs. I will not take these images as an explanation for the album.
I would rather discover whether the music can accomplish all of this on its own.
Because now there is a question hanging over these six tracks:
What happened to that diamond?
The answer begins with “Heimaland.”
The walk begins.
My listening journey through HJARTA begins.
And something needs to be remembered very clearly: there are albums… and there are albums.
Some will simply be part of the entertainment. Others will be the experience.
HJARTA comes to offer exactly that: experience, sensations, emotions.
So there is nothing more appropriate than giving this piece the time it demands.
Detach yourself from your busy world for a few moments and allow the guitars and harmonies, together with Søren’s voice, to gently carry you away.
From its very first movements, “Heimaland” establishes far more than weight: it builds a vast and deeply atmospheric sonic territory, in which every instrumental layer expands the dimension of the composition.
The guitars do not simply emerge to crush; they build. There is density, repetition, and a kind of deliberate hypnosis in their motifs, while bass and drums provide depth and movement. The composition shows no anxiety to reach its destination. It allows its ideas to remain long enough to transform into sensation.
And perhaps that is precisely where its strength lies.
The track grows progressively, accumulating intensity until it reaches moments of genuine grandeur. But when it could simply insist upon brute force, it retreats.
Approximately halfway through, the density gives way to a more sparse, contemplative passage, almost suspended in the air.
It is not a simple interlude.
It is absence.
And absence transforms everything that came before it.
The return of the instrumentation takes on another meaning. The music does not simply begin again; it returns carrying the memory of what has just happened.
We are no longer hearing the same “Heimaland” we left behind.
There is a sense of transformation, as though the very place had changed while we were away.
Its structure seems to follow an almost organic movement:
density, expansion, climax, rarefaction, reconstruction, new climax, and dissolution.
It is an architecture that privileges experience over haste.
And there is something particularly fascinating about this relationship between the music and its title.
Heimaland — homeland, home ground — might suggest shelter, belonging, return.
But the music offers a far more ambiguous interpretation.
Here, home does not necessarily mean comfort.
There is belonging, but there is also distance.
There is beauty, but something unsettling beneath its surface.
Like looking at a familiar landscape after many years and realizing that it is still yours, even though it is no longer quite the same.
It would therefore be far too easy to simply classify it as atmospheric, melancholic, or epic.
“Heimaland” is a landscape song, but not a postcard.
It evokes an ancient, cold, ancestral place where beauty and solitude coexist without needing to explain themselves.
And when it reaches its conclusion, it does not need a monumental explosion to prove what it has built.
It can simply dissolve.
Leaving behind the feeling that we have been somewhere — and that, for a few minutes, that place also existed within us.
Perhaps this is the greatest quality of “Heimaland”:
it does not seem interested in telling the listener a story.
It wants to make them remember one.
A considerable part of HJARTA’s power lies in the way its instruments do not compete for space. They build the same idea through different functions.
The guitars are the axis.
In “Solin Vaugna,” repetitive riffs and lines establish the track’s identity, alternating between density and openness. There is weight, but also an evident concern for texture. The guitars are not merely a wall of sound; they guide the music through different emotional states.
It is an important distinction.
Weight, here, is not synonymous with excess. It is dimension.
Jakob Kiilerich’s bass works close to the body of the composition. It fills the lower registers, anchors the guitars, and makes certain moments feel physically heavier. As the music becomes denser, its presence helps transform weight into something tangible, almost corporeal.
The drums are the pulse of the journey. They guide shifts in intensity without breaking the contemplative character of the compositions. When the track grows, they provide the strength necessary to transform atmosphere into grandeur; when they retreat, they preserve the tension the music needs to remain alive.
“Saivør” brings this collective grandeur to the surface.
The guitar provides the structure.
The bass gives it depth.
The drums set the steps in motion.
And between them there is enough room for each layer to remain audible and carry consequence.
In “Vætna,” this relationship finds another form of expression. Each instrument seems to understand its place without trying to occupy another’s territory. It is one of the album’s most mature qualities: Maunah understands that a heavy composition does not need to be filled at all times in order to feel immense.
Sometimes, all it takes is removing something.
Letting the composition reveal its own dimensions.
Allowing the echo to expose the size of the sonic environment.
This is where HJARTA distances itself from a purely generic reading of Nordic Doom Metal.
The roots of doom remain evident in the slowness, density, the gravity of the guitars, and the way the band understands the importance of time. But the album does not remain confined by them.
Nordic folk emerges as memory.
Modern metal appears as strength.
Atmosphere brings the two together.
And then there are the small details — those elements that may not immediately sit at the center of the composition, but transform the setting into something distinctly its own.
The overtone flute, played by Søren, is one of them. Its timbre seems to emerge from another time, introducing an almost primitive, ritualistic dimension among guitars, bass, drums, and voice.
It is not there to add exoticism.
It seems to belong to the music.
As though that sound had not been placed upon the composition, but discovered within it.
These small deviations expand HJARTA’s palette. Sounds that might disappear beneath the mass of the guitars are given enough room to exist, creating shifts in temperature throughout the compositions.
And this includes the very way Søren works with his voice.
There are moments when it sounds like singing, others when it approaches an ancestral vocalization, and still others when it deliberately merges with the instrumentation.
The voice is not simply above the music.
It inhabits the same organism.
This attention to texture helps explain why the Nordic folk element does not sound like a layer applied over the doom. It is woven into the album’s identity.
It is as if Maunah took the heavy structure of doom, opened its walls, and allowed other things to enter.
The wood.
The earth.
The wind.
Memory.
And perhaps it is precisely this delicacy in the details that makes the weight of HJARTA feel even greater.
Because a forest is not defined only by its trees.
It is defined by what exists between them.
And Maunah seems to understand this deeply.
When we reach the title track, “Hjarta,” the journey has already crossed much of this territory.
And then we realize that the album has been speaking about presence all along.
Not necessarily about a linear narrative, nor about events that need to be deciphered. But about what remains in the body after an experience has ended.
The six tracks function as parts of the same organism.
They are forty-one minutes built with a very particular understanding of space and movement.
That is why HJARTA does not feel like something meant to be played in the background while something else is happening.
It demands presence.
The production understands this. Tue Madsen, responsible for recording and mixing the bass and drums at Antfarm Studios, works alongside the overall mixing and mastering by Jens Moss Thorsen of Mossy Production, preserving weight and definition without turning atmosphere into a mere decorative effect.
The guitars breathe without losing density.
The bass remains present.
The drums have body.
And the voice moves through the layers without destroying the mystery surrounding it.
Even the silence seems to have been mixed.
There is a small distance between recognizing potential in a band and witnessing that potential begin to take shape.
In 2025, Heimaland left me standing before a door left ajar.
In 2026, HJARTA walks through that door.
The lineup of this new chapter brings together Søren Sol Koldsen-Zederkof on lead vocals, backing vocals, and overtone flute; Mads Medom Papsø Laursen on lead guitar; Janus Holst Aaen on guitar and backing vocals; Jakob Kiilerich on bass; and Tim Sejr Larsen on drums, following the departure of Danny Woe, Maunah’s co-founder and member of the previous lineup, who left the band due to creative differences.
It is a change that belongs to the band’s history and to this particular moment in its journey.
Because HJARTA does not sound like a band trying to discover who it wants to be.
It sounds like a band beginning to discover what it already was.
And perhaps that is the difference between a promise and an identity.
What I found in Heimaland was still taking shape.
Here, what was once possibility has gained substance.
Gained depth.
Gained silence.
Gained space.
And, above all, gained courage.
HJARTA does not try to drag us into darkness through force.
It builds an environment.
Lets the cold pass through the music.
Allows the light to appear for a few seconds before the shadows reclaim the path.
And when the final note disappears, there is that strange feeling that something has been left behind.
Or perhaps it has been left within us.
It is difficult to know.
Perhaps that is precisely the point.
Because some albums end when the music ends.
Others keep walking with us.
HJARTA belongs to the second category.
And now I can look once again at that diamond I mentioned in 2025.
It is no longer merely in the making.
It has begun to reflect the light.
RATE: 9,5/10
TRACK LISTING
1 – Heimaland
2 – Solin Vaugna
3 – Theinajau
4 – Saivør
5 – Vætna
6 – Hjarta
LINE-UP
Søren Sol Koldsen-Zederkof – lead & backing vocals, overtone flute
Mads Medom Papsø Laursen – lead guitars
Janus Holst Aaen – guitars, backing vocals
Jakob Kiilerich – bass
Tim Sejr Wettendorff Larsen – drums
Bass & drum recording & mix by Tue Madsen at Antfarm Studios, Aarhus (DK)
Guitars & vocals self-recorded by the artists at home studios (DK)
Mix & mastering by Jens Moss Thorsen at Mossy Production, Aarhus (DK)
Artwork by Søren Sol Koldsen-Zederkof
Layout by Łukasz Jaszak
Prophecy Productions — September 18, 2026
Nordic Doom Metal | 41:18
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