Den ständigt närvarande ångesten

Over the past years it has become very fashionable to associate bands with the crust/d-beat trend. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that if many of these projects didn't have anything to do with these genres, either musically or ideologically. I don't know where this tendency comes from, but such actions can lead to discouragement when seeing these specific genre terms for subsequent names (it's even a little bit the case for me). Knowing Dispyt from their second full length “Under tiden jag sålde min själ till Satan” I knew what to expect so seeing their first album “Den Ständigt Närvarande Ångesten” being advertised as crust/black Metal I had trust that the sound is exactly that.

After the first listening session it turned out that my suspicions were right. Dispyt is not an opportunistic band that wants to follow a trend. The music, the sound, the image, the whole cover fits the terms crust/d-beat/black, and it's all rounded off with a shot of Finnish energy. What is especially important to me is the great musical diversity of the album. There is a lot going on here, punk rhythms dominate, but we also have some faster blast-beat parts and some references to Darkthrone and their black'n'roll phase. The whole thing is rounded off by a really dirty sound, where the gurgling of guitars and bass obviously reminds of death metal screams from Sweden in the style of Entombed and Grave. The musicians also deserve respect for fitting no less than twelve compositions into the album's less than twenty-seven minutes. Since punk is punk, there is no point in developing complex compositions, it must be direct and without any compromises, because the greatest strength lies in simplicity. I really like the fact that the band has not limited itself to the punk mood, but can also speed up significantly when necessary, and the vocals recorded by each musician perfectly reflect the compositional diversity of the songs. Thanks to this, the album has no chance to be boring.

An interesting aspect is the fact that Dispyt consists of musicians Ondfødt and Finntroll, and the album was recorded and released a year and a half earlier by the musicians themselves. Immortal Frost Productions released a good album and after it sold out, they got permission to release the album under their own banner, which will allow the music of the Finns to be presented to a wider audience, because in my humble opinion “Den Ständigt Närvarande Ångesten” deserves it and it would be a shame if it was lost due to lack of proper promotion and low circulation. I also hope that the musicians find time to further develop their style and recording further albums, because this one proves that they can create valuable material in this rather risky genre, which is a combination of black metal and crust. So get a cold beer and turn on the volume.