Eldir nótt

A lot of bands try to mix ambient elements into black metal but I don’t think I’ve heard a band come close to doing it as effectively as German project Fyrnask does on this release. If Danielewski’s disturbingly creative first novel House of Leaves had a soundtrack, this would be it.

Eldir Nótt alternates lurking, otherworldly soundscapes with staggered bursts of metallic fury, but it’s clear that the hazy ambient sections are where sole member and composer Fyrnd prefers to spend his time. The tracks on Eldir Nótt, while retaining some semblance of coherent structure, aren’t songs so much as statements of one singularly grotesque vision manifested in various ways, like many gnarled branches of the same wretched tree.

Several of the tracks are short, moody slabs of buzzing guitars and ambient effects that Fyrnd uses to explore the depths of his vile imagination, but the lengthier songs like ‘Jarðelder’ and ‘Saltrian’ allow him to mix some substantial metal sections with the twisted ambience, disturbing vocal moans, unsettling cello drones and other stuff going on, and this is where the album becomes really transcendent. The music swells and crashes through a whirlwind of blast beats and headbang-worthy guitar onslaughts, eventually peaking with towering, apocalyptic soundscapes that seem to occupy the full sonic spectrum from deep, menacing bass drones to soaring lead guitar harmonies and everything in between.

You sort of have to hear it to understand how Eldir Nótt differs from other ambient black metal bands like Trist, Neige et Noirceur or Spectral Lore. An appropriate description might be a mixture of Trist and White Tomb-era Altar of Plagues, perhaps with some Darkspace thrown in, but honestly the instrumentation and creativity eclipses pretty much everything else out there to the point where Fyrnask defies comparison. Every year I have one or two albums that pretty much everyone who talks to me gets told to go check out, and for 2013 Eldir Nótt is most definitely one of them.

(Originally written for Musical Warfare)