In de nevel van afgunst

Some works of extreme metal are documents of decline, a real time account of mental, societal, or cultural decay, imagined or real. And some are works that emanate from a place after the “event”, where new forms of musical logic are constructed to express the inverted, warped, and wholly alien attitude to the “good” necessitated by the needs of a new historical moment where survival is predicated on understanding a world swept clean of yesterday’s axiomatic truths. For all the raw musical bluster constituting this riff laden take on grassroots black metal, ‘In de nevel van afgunst’ is a work defined by deep undertones of grim resignation.

Hellevaerder resituate the frantic, fast paced, and riff orientated Dutch take on black metal toward a dignified frugality, an acceptance of what we have lost and the construction of something new. Where a Sammath or a Cirith Gorgor would bludgeon the listener with sustained acts of sonic violence, Hellevaerder manipulate the same tools of raw yet crisp black metal into a melancholia free of self-indulgence.

This is undeniably harsh music, with jagged riffs define by mild dissonance, sharp transitions, disjointed staccato tangents and an ambiguous relationship to cadence. But the production retains a clarity and humanity that anchors the music in something recognisable as the emotive. Some tracks – such as the incremental exploration of being downtrodden as a process that is ‘Uit het vuur getrokken’ – are happy to articulate extended tremolo chord sequences with layered harmonic material, anchored by mid-paced blast-beats. These retain fidelity to their traditional black metal roots whilst updating the latent historicism with a swirl of modernist urban nihilism.

But for the most part this album is constantly refreshing the musical picture with frequent tempo changes, lead guitar refrains jumping out at odd angles, constructing their own harmonic logic only to disappear just as quickly. Vocals range from high end black metal crooning to more guttural pontifications that only augment Hellevaerder’s ability to render conflicting moods and themes into a remarkably unified sonic project.

Black metal’s overarching treatments of grand scale themes finds a way to marry itself to the intimacy of internal experience on ‘In de nevel van afgunst’. But unlike so many other attempts to achieve this in the last two decades or so – from DSBM to the well meaning but ultimately pointless tangents of post black metal – the understated sobriety of Hellevaeder’s delivery, tempering any musical excess and blanketing the emotive topography of the album with a dignified resolution to cope in a post decline world mark this out as a far more interesting treatment of black metal re-interpretated as an individualist art form. It comes to us from the airwaves of the near future, signposting the realisation that it is already too late to save what was, and attempts to resolves us to the task of building anew on the ruins.

Originally published at Hate Meditations