Is there a band in your record collection that you feel is somehow "yours"? That from a combination of being utterly brilliant, but at the same time being (in your mind) pitifully underappreciated — even by the target audience that should have made it one of the most heralded bands in its genre — to the point that you wonder if, by some inexplicable cosmic misalignment, you’re the only rabid fan this band really has, thereby making this group into an even bigger entity in your most exclusive of cults?

I’ve got some such bands. Perhaps the most important one of these is Sweden’s Thy Primordial.

Metal fans know a ton of black metal comes out of Sweden. It tends to be blurry and fast, yet prettier and more flowery than the more celebrated Norwegian stuff. Where Only the Seasons Mark the Paths of Time, in this sense, is definitely Swedish: it’s loaded with textbook buzzing, swirling, fast-picked, harmonized melodies that evoke Nordic pride, heathen charges, and glorious, torrential, epic storms. But there’s something about Thy Primordial’s style that elevates them above just about any other band in the genre. I think it’s the unique sense of grandeur and beauty that they can marry with the more common scathing, freezing brutality.

I’m sitting here listening to this album and gloriously, unconsciously pumping my fists in triumph. I almost forgot how great this album is. Where Only the Seasons Mark the Paths of Time is Thy Primordial’s first full-length record, after their rather derivative demo (now compiled under the title Under Iskall Troll Måne). This and the second album, At the World of Untrodden Wonder (which refined the style of the first record into a much more cohesive signature), was before Thy Primordial’s shift to a more brutal, square-shouldered, death metal-inspired approach. It’s all totally great, but there’s something unmatchably stirring about this early incarnation of the band, and the rather rough edges that still existed within the group’s creative output during this recording greatly contributes to its charm.

The music is simultaneously piercing and beautiful in its espousing of the fast, blurred, blissed-out buzzing melody that dominates the recording. The guitars are the main stars, and the bass comes through at many times to provide some fine melodic counterpoint. The drums throttle along tirelessly with an at-times amorphous sensation, with tom fills of the most cavernous kind. The vocals, which sound like a duck possessed, are relatively buried beneath all these layers, giving the record an ambient quality of having a raving lunatic scream along to the riffs while buried hopelessly (and perhaps contentedly) at the bottom of the sonic hurricane.

Where Only the Seasons Mark the Paths of Time is glory. It’s like the soundtrack to beholding the grandest Pagan hall amidst an epic snowstorm that your fantasy can come up with, and blurring it out to make your hairs stand up on end. I think I may be the only person on earth to think so, and I like that just fine.