Del En | Høst

I speak from experience when I say that few places on Earth are as cold, frostbitten and hellish as the Fargo/Moorhead area. Fitting, then, that the cities would play host to a number of excellent black metal bands, and Høst is surely among them. With Del En | Høst (or Part One: Autumn), the band has solidified their place in that canon.

As with most albums, my first impression was the cover art. Del En doesn't give you a lot to work with, but it makes apt use of what it's got: the visual aesthetic of the logo makes it resoundingly clear that it's a black metal CD, and this is corroborated by the simplicity of the design and the plain black & white color scheme. The logo itself is indicative of more than that, though. Its general shape is not unlike Elder Futhark runes, but it's stretched and altered into something unique. As if to keep that promise, the music plays with established black metal conventions but takes them in unexpected directions. Across the album's hour-long runtime, it flirts with death metal, dark ambient, avant-garde music, atmoblack, and even mainstream rock - all these synthesized into a style that coheres and compels.

The band's unique take on meloblack isn't exactly "progressive", but it isn't far off, either - most tunes alternates ably between a rollicking 6/8 that recalls At the Gates circa '95 and a groovy 4/4 that owes more to alternative rock than anything 'metal'. This, though, is a pretty wise choice, as it fits the melodic songs excellently and makes the more traditionally heavy parts all the more gratifying and impactful. Certain songs, particularly "Høsten" do experiment with uneven time signatures (as well as enough syncopation to make 4/4 feel like uneven time), but these variations never interrupt the flow of the guitar riffs. The guitars, in fact, are probably the most impressive part of the composition. The tremolo riffs and minor chords one may expect are certainly present, but more frequent are melodic leads, augmented and suspended chords, and the occasional out-and-out pentatonic hard-rock riff. Without fail, the introduction of a lead guitar means the introduction of a part that could be studied by music majors as a prime example of point and counterpoint. The more traditionally 'metal'-sounding riffs invariably feature just enough added dissonance or syncopation to sound vicious. I have to believe that the band's sole member Z Ness' primary instrument was the guitar; though his performances on drums, bass and keys are excellent too, it's the guitars that shine the brightest.

His vocal contribution to the album is a high point, too - though there's nothing stylistically striking, Z Ness's version of the familiar black metal shriek is expertly performed and sounds phenomenal. Occasional moments delivered in other styles sound great too, and always seem to come at just the right time to keep the screams from feeling redundant. The lyrics Ness howls, though, aren't so strong. This isn't to say they're uniformly bad; Del En's best lines read like cigarette-fueled Beat Generation poetry, and fit well with the refreshingly modern sound. Others, though, are just plain bad: take "Only whispers remain / But She screams of the wane" or "She sucked me dry under the stars... / She sells sex by the sea" for instance. Indeed, Ness' fixation on sex and violence is one of the most reliable weak points of the record, due in no small part to his apparent inability to write about such subjects without employing tired clichés, obnoxiously poor wordings and positively childish attempts at sounding edgy or (god forbid) maniacal.

The bad attempts at edginess don't stop there: throughout the record are ill-fitting, non-sequitarian references to Norway. The only purpose they ostensibly serve is to establish some tenuous connection to Norway as the home of black metal. Though I try not to use words like "poser" unironically, it's a little tough to avoid here; this sort of Black Circle idol worship, common in the black metal underground, is not just cringeworthy, it proves soundly that its perpetrators missed the iconoclastic point in the first place - never mind the fact that, for my money at least, black metal started in Sweden with Bathory. Another result of this Norway obsession is a few scattered lines sung in Norwegian; their scarcity, though, leads me to believe that Ness isn't a speaker and simply included them to strengthen that connection. Moreover, and speaking as a fairly green Norwegian language learner myself, the grammar and vocabulary are simple enough that a beginning student could understand them. This isn't to say that non-fluent speakers should never include a target language in their writing, nor is it to say that brief passages in foreign tongues can't make an impact in lyrics; given the context, though, it doesn't make a great impression.

This is a shame, because with better lyrics the album could be a perfect 10, or at least damn near. My first listen through the album was blind - that is, I wasn't looking at the liner notes at all. Ness' vocals are mostly incomprehensible, so I had no way of knowing what he was saying. At that first listen, I was absolutely floored. Having read the lyrics, though, subsequent listens just haven't had the same impact. Still, the lyrics are only one part of a complex and varied album, and to say that they 'ruin' the record would be to discount how incredible the music and overall presentation are on all other fronts. And altogether, the album is remarkable. It manages to break out of genre trappings and sound fresh while still paying homage to some of the most musically sound elements of black metal's history, and it does so intelligently. From the track order to the sequencing of riffs and parts in songs to the aforementioned cover art, so much of the album is expertly crafted that it's impossible to deny the skill and artistry that went into its creation.