Mellom skogkledde aaser

This album is really something. I could go as far as to say it’s perfect . It encompasses pretty much everything you want in black metal, without any of the vices. and adds enough folky bits to make it intersting, while staying predominently black metal. Even though I got this album awhile ago, I still find myself coming back to it and listening to it. It is very hard to get tired of, and I find myself comparing albums to it all the time. For me, it really is the top standard.

It gets the production directly on the dot, for starters. It’s raw enough that you get that proper black metal feel, but it’s just clean enough so that you can hear all the instruments and the vocals clearly. It all sticks together nicely so that there’s little clash without destroying that chaotic feel. Instrumentally, it has some odd tendencies to it. It isn’t really folk metal, but it will have these breaks where it will slow down and it will just be Chellos and vocals, or some sort of obscure instrument more associated with classical music. It will be very atmospheric with pagan tones, then break into blistering, fast black metal riffs or a marching, Viking bit stampede. The guitar ranges from depressing and melodic riffs to pure evil, head banging pieces that could rile anyone up. The vocals are your standard black metal kind, scathing and tortured, but the vocalist actually manages to be fluent, I can hear the words he is saying instead of them being heavy screeche! s, inaudible to my sense. Although, they will also break into some Viking chants in a couple of songs that really add to the pagan atmosphere.

The only vice I can really go onto say about this is that all the lyrics are in Norwegian, so non-Norwegians won’t be able to understand it, which is a shame because the vocals are very much black metal, but coherent as well. Suffice to say, in all honesty it just adds to the Viking/Pagan feel that the whole album encompasses and to be honest, I have hard time understanding black metal vocalists anyway.

So, if you want a Pagan/Viking album, but love black metal and can’t take too much folk, go for this, because you will not regret it and it will have everything you are looking for in both black metal chaos, and pagan solemn.