Vilst er síðsta fet

This little EP has just kicked my ass in a major way! From their funeral tuxedos to the gritty, gritty black and white cover art, you probably have a good idea what to expect long before the opening notes of Vilst er Sidsta Fed roll out of your speakers. Hamferd evokes bleak landscapes of black islands, lost seamen, dampness, and all the other misery of living in the Faroe Islands. So, as a doom album, this is spot fucking on.

I definitely find a strong link to My Dying Bride, with the crawling tempos and crushing guitars, but Hamferd uses more deathly vocals than those chaps. Jon Hansen's got a really nice voice, by the way. In fact, it was his vocal melodies that I found floating around in my head after my first listen. His quasi-operatic singing is especially plaintive and mournful, so much so that I almost begrudge the harsh vocals. On this release, however, they are expertly mixed into the music and contribute to the depressive atmosphere.

There's not a whole lot going on riff-wise, but once again, this a doom album. Most of the time, they pound out like hammers pounding nails into coffins; chugging, heavy and morose. Over these sections they sometimes play single note melodies, holding onto the notes like a final, meager hope that is never to materialize. The only variation in this is when a clean section pops up, or they decide to do a bit of chord picking. And the soloing? Well, not really much in that department...very simple, very catchy solos, that seem to be plaintive Celtic melodies reaching across the endless, cold oceans. They have a keyboardist, but Hamferd has clearly done their homework and kept his mits off the Elves and Fairies Effects. No, here the keys pretty much follow the guitar lines, casting ghastly atmospheres. The drums are remarkably active for a doom album, I find, though due to the basic structure of the music, they don't have room for excessive fills.

Vilst er Síðsta Fet is very well produced, on top of it all, a true godsend for this talented young band. It sounds almost like a Hypocrisy album, and in fact, those Swedes do bear a certain resemlence to Hamfred. I was not expecting something this good, especially for a band's first effort. Hamfred's got a mighty big task at hand to follow this up with something better, but I'm quite sure that they will be able to do it.