Norska

Featuring the bassist from cosmic sludge-titans YOB, Oregon-based Norska are unsurprisingly purveyors of the slow and the heavy. This self-titled piece of atmospheric doom is their sole effort thus far, and promises bludgeoning riffs and choking darkness.

On the surface, Norska appears as the archetypical neckbearded slugdeheads. Their art is, however, of the darker kind. The riffs are often absolutely crushing, and the dark shroud of a cold and desolate wasteland drips massively from every note. Incomprehensible lyrics are barked and wheezed, as a wild animal suffocating under the ever-pounding waves of bass.

Despite this domineering gloominess, the claustrophobia is not all-encompassing. Norska also have a progressive side, shining through in the Enslaved-esque “Nobody One Knows”, and especially in the strangely uplifting “They Mostly Come At Night”. These brief moments of light in the pitch black swamp assure that Norska break their mold and emerge as a beast of their own. Thus the snails-pace tarpit is allowed room to breathe, if only for a second, before diving back into that dreary funeral dirge.

With a tension that dips into moments of pure horror, Norska is not a pleasant experience. The mounting dread is overwhelming at times, but complemented beautifully by specks of pale sunlight. A comparison to YOB seems apt, as both bands are master servitors of the musical equivalent to being slowly swallowed by a raging sea.


Written for The Metal Observer