Kampfar

Impressive and perhaps even revolutionary for its time, the band's self-titled debut EP is an exemplary first attempt at capturing the sound that would later come to characterize much of the band's later career. Kampfar is a good short album, providing nearly nineteen minutes of - for the most part - worthwhile pagan black metal. In this first major attempt, the members behind Kampfar took what they knew and had experienced in previous bands, and successfully compounded those experiences into an impressive Norse-themed showcase of their work.

Like the band itself, this short album provides the canvas in which Kampfar attempted and to a degree succeeded to implement their own folklore, and their own folk influences and yearnings in the style of black metal, through a way that it should be in pagan black metal. It is certainly not without error. Nineteen minutes of music isn't much at all, and it's also fairly obvious that this EP was meant almost more as a promo of things to come - Mellom skogkledde aaser - than as a work intended to be judged on its own merits. Maybe for that reason this album is hardly remembered or mentioned; it's not so much an album but a sampler of tracks that weren't made to be seen as a finished product in my opinion. This is definitely true for the track "Hymne" which was later reworked and improved upon in Mellom skogkledde aaser; that version arguably being the inferior one, however.

Nevertheless, Kampfar is an exhibition of talent on a range of platforms. The guitarwork is heavily inundated with a fierce application of chords, with the occasional acoustic guitar strumming a solemn solo here and there. The drums - while seemingly nothing special - provide a relatively coordinated balance with the rest of the instruments and the vocals. The vocals - ah, the vocals - are the album's greatest strength. A division between harsh vocals influenced by black metal and distant Norse chanting provide just the right combination of folk influences to be meaningful and tolerable and compelling. Raspy, whispering vocals accent both nearly quiet folk melodies and pulsating loudness naturally.

My only gripe with this album is a minor one. While both "Kampfar" and "Hymne" make great tracks, "Hjemkomsten" leaves much to be desired. It feels and acts much more like an extended outro for a much larger album than as the third component of a much smaller work of art. It's also the only track that appears to suffer from issues with mixing and production, in that compared to the other two tracks the quality is noticeably poorer. That said, being such a minor part of this EP, in length and composition, it feels like practical nitpicking to try to rip it apart when it would be perfectly adequate on a much more complete album. Despite Kampfar feeling like it started with a roar and ended with a fizzle, I will give credit to the arrangement on "Hjemkomsten." The band had the right idea how to progress with the track, but just the execution fell a tad short.

Overall, though, I would rank Kampfar as easily one of the best debut EPs out there. It's not much, but in hindsight really did its job at providing a sampling of the sound that Kampfar fans would grow to love. It's rudimentary, and not particularly fleshed out as an album, but on the whole still an album worth giving a spin. I would recommend this, if only for the most diehard fans who wish to know how Kampfar has evolved. Compared to the band's other works, it's most certainly not required listening. If you're just starting out with Kampfar, skip this and go for Mellom skogkledde aaser instead. Come back after only if you wish to know where it all started.