Stridens hus

The near-inevitability of our favorite bands declining with age is something that we all see coming, but everyone deals with this unfortunate fact of life in different ways. Some embrace changes as interesting developments and better than that ever-haunting spectre of stagnation. Others choose to see bands' overall career trajectories as climbing steadily skyward, each album an improvement upon the previous. Fanatics often argue that critics of recent works by well-loved bands are simply stuck in the past, unable to accept that the new material is just as good (or even better) than what came before. The more pragmatic and down-to-earth among us accept that, while new material may be weaker, it would be ludicrous to expect an aging band to continue to forever capture that youthful fire that made their early material so passionate in the first place. And, ever so rarely, the old guard actually do manage to release material at least on par with their masterworks from their long-past primes, these rare cases doing a great deal to fuel those varied reactions and keep even the most tired attempts at reigniting the vigors of youth as topics of much discussion and controversy.

No matter how many failures one witnesses in this vein, those very few successes breed hope, and hope I had going into Stridens Hus. After falling in love with this band and enjoying Hoest's music for so long, finally getting to see the band perform live completely convinced me that Hoest was not only a man who lives and breathes black metal, but a man who had written masterpieces but, perhaps more importantly, understood why those albums were so fantastic in the first place and was deeply in touch with the creative spirit that spawned those songs. That's really where so many bands have failed in their later years - a complete misinterpretation of the good qualities of their early works. That's how bands like Running Wild and Metallica and countless others have lost the way.

Taake, though, are something different. Taake albums have always rocked; without that vital, fist-pumping spirit that flows through even the most forgettable of Hoest's songs the band could never be anything more than a shadow of its former glory. Hoest very clearly knows this, and his greatest fault here is playing up that angle a bit too consciously. A huge amount of the material here sounds distinctly like the work of a black'n'roll garage rock band. Listen to a track like "Orm" and tell me you can't picture a bunch of dudes in Venom shirts swilling beer and rocking out in a garage with the door open wide to let in the summer sunshine. It's not bad stuff, per se, and being able to imagine the band having such a good time playing this stuff helps to pull more enjoyment out of listening to it, but damn if these big black rock chord progressions don't leave me yearning for the triumphant tremolo riffs of Taake of yore.

Apart from that mode of guitar work being somewhat dull in and of itself, there are also serious clashes within the album. Take the aforementioned "Orm" - the song finishes out with chanted clean vocals that up the Bathory quotient, turning down the temperature on the track back to the more comfortable arctic chill the band works best in, then we're greeted with a shift to "Det Fins En Prins" which is classic swagger-filled Taake through and through. That's the really strange thing about all of this - no matter how hard the band tries to be this big, bombastic blackened rock band, it almost seems like they're forcing it and that they can't help but just play Taake songs. Chill ice winds will slice through the blandest Queens of the Stone Age desert rock stomp chords ("Orm" really does sound like Josh Homme did a guest spot on the album or something) and tracks will take a knife-edge turn back to Hordaland.

We also get some of the effective experimentation that made Noregs vaapen work better than it should have. "Det Fins En Prins" has a wah-wah bass solo that fits into the wintry surroundings shockingly well. "Stank" is pure Taake goodness throughout the verses, but the pre-chorus and chorus shift into mid-to-late-era Darkthrone territory that's something of a disappointment considering how much I like the more Taake-ish parts of the song, but even so I can't deny that the band sounds pretty good doing this burly powerchord stuff with gang shouts.

Those forced-sounding elements abound, no matter how much it seems like the band wants to slip back into their glorious comfort zone. The rhythm section is a good barometer of this effect; while the greatest material in the band's back catalogue certainly featured stand-out bass and drum work, here whenever either instrument comes to the foreground to get a bit more playful it feels like the attempt is being made to have those instruments stand out, rather than having them stand out as a natural consequence of their brilliant integration into the music. Likewise, the songwriting often feels haphazard. "En Sang Til Sand Om Ildebrann" flits between confused, pounding chord sections meant to link everything together but feeling like a big fat mess, and genuinely great little micro-passages of stuff that sounds as good as the greatest Taake material.

In so many other cases, I'd chalk things like that up to a band well past its prime sometimes accidentally touching on greatness in otherwise dull "back to the roots" attempts, but to me these (numerous) parts of Stridens Hus feel like the music that Taake really wants to be playing in the first place, with the roots rock bits feeling like uncomfortable posturing. Hell, the song transitions here feel just as haphazard as the songs themselves. It doesn't feel like an attempt to have songs flow together to make a fluid, cohesive album but rather simply unexpected cuts because Hoest realized that the song didn't really have anyplace to go.

Despite the negative tone of this review, I've gotta make clear that there are a lot of really good parts on Stridens Hus, they just come upon the music suddenly and rarely stick around long enough to make you forget that this comes across as a solid Taake album cut up and glued back together using Hard Rock Hotel brand superglue. It's not even that the rock parts are dogshit - no, they're more just sort of uninteresting - it's that they feel so forced and are so liberally sprinkled throughout the album that it becomes impossible to really get lost in the glorious blackness like I could with the band's previous works. The really high quality of the stuff that does hit all the right notes sure is a tease, though, and leaves me thoroughly convinced that, if Hoest ever decided he did want to go back and make another album in the style of the early material, he not only could pull it off but do so with aplomb. Here's hoping that comes sooner rather than later.

"Stridens Hus" is a Taake's sixth studio album. The comeback after 3 years of waiting impressed me a lot. And one of the reasons is that the album still has the original sound that Hoest has been working on for an almost decade, without any changes. The sound that has been partly reached in the fourth studio album "Taake" since then had become a noticeable feature. And I support the Hoest's decision to take a break with experiments and squeeze as much as he can from the base that he himself established after long years of wandering in the search for this inimitable sound. And you can actually see the history of this wandering if you will have a close meet with the whole discography from the very beginning. But this review won't be about those albums, obviously.

As I noticed before, I loved this album for its originality. Originality is one of the things that I like in such genre as black metal. And Taake does its work pretty good in this way. The originality, especially in the atmosphere, is what still catches my attention to every little piece of Taake's creation. Beautiful from one side and dark and gloomy from the other, this atmosphere takes you deep into Norwegian lands of the eternal cold and sorrow, and represents it with the full TNBM impression. Every time I start listen to the album , the first song, "Gamle Norig", takes me away from my room and pushes towards the North Pole below the night sky pierced with an aurora. And after that I don't notice how tracks are changing. It's the one big journey through which the author wanted us to guide. Except, I think, one moment. The song "Det Fins En Prins" reminds me of Taake's fifth album "Noregs Vaapen", which is the change, for me, personally, to the nostalgic mood. But, still, after, the rest of the album goes in the same mood that it started from the beginning. Which is awesome, because monotony has its own beauty.

I especially like the quality of the recording. Taake's sound is, in my opinion, exactly that perfect sound that black metal supposed to have in its modern, i.e. our, time (posers who are trying to simulate the very raw sound of 90's go to Satan). I like the guitar sound which is a bit reverberated but not as much as it would be annoying to listen to, but still it keeps the same (which is, again, good) stage as the sound on "Noregs Vaapen" (the good stage). The drums are bit harsher than on the previous album which is neither bad nor good, but give me a bit (still) different feel.

Unfortunately, we won't hear the banjo anymore (I'm still hoping to hear it in the next album, though), but we'll be able to check something new (hint: track No. 7) unusual for the standard black metal sound (and probably, even hilarious for someones), though I fully support these kinds of things, absolutely and undoubtedly.

By hitting the overall section I would like to express my opinion in relation to people who tell things like "experimentation lacking." No, friends, this is not the field for the experimentation you have been looking for, not even close. Still, I can't understand those guys who wait a miracle from black metal will make some kind of successful experiment (exactly, modern Satyricon is what called "an experimentation in black metal'), so you have chosen the wrong door from the very beginning.

Don’t be fooled by the minor scale tremolo. The opening riff on “Gamle Norig,” while cathartic and very evil sounding, is not a great indicator of what is to come. While there are some Heart of Winter-era Immortal moments scattered throughout, the majority is a journey of genre fusion.

Even when Hoest is at full black, so to speak, something seems a little off with the guitar tone at times. It gets so fuzzy that some of the organic feel I am used to on a Taake record gets lost. The drums and vocals, however, sound excellent throughout. The tone is still typically heavy on the treble end, but balanced just enough to keep it from becoming grating.

Many of the tracks feel mismatched and dull. For instance, despite all attempts at progressiveness, “Det fins en prins” and the instrumental “En sang til sand om ildebrann” are both a bit of a mess. The riffs just aren’t very interesting to me and the transitions between them are sloppy and even jarring at times. I will say that the outro to the former has a fairly epic feel to it and the addition of wah-wah on the guitar was a nice touch. There are some moments where the devil-may-care variety actually works nicely. “Stank” is a huge success in my opinion, even if others may not feel the same. There is a fairly repetitive punk riff here that is punctuated by an awesome surfer-punk solo and excellent D-beats from the drums. Yet at the drop of a hat we are back to the minor key tremolo and blastbeats synonymous to the genre. This was probably the most exciting and interesting moment of the album for me.

“Orm,” on the other hand, sounds like a straight-up rock track. There is a strong alternative vibe and a more traditional structure that is about as close to “radio friendly” as I have heard. There are even some moments that reminded me of Led Zeppelin as opposed to Mayhem. While I was surprised to hear this style, I can’t say that I was displeased with it. Taake’s albums have become fairly interchangeable, so to hear some further experimentation is refreshing, albeit imperfect. I also hear some Blackwater Park influence on the outro of this track with the high-end lead over the monk chanting. Cool stuff, lightly above-average track.

Unfortunately, what I did enjoy loses steam after “Stank.” The remaining 3 tracks, one of which is the instrumental, seem to meander and lack memorable moments aside from a kickin’ percussion section during one of the other punk segments. In some ways the trajectory of Taake is similar to that of Darkthrone. Hoest seems bored with simple grimness and bleakness of traditional black metal and has thusly branched out into various other styles from rock and punk to bluegrass. Even if this album doesn’t quite come together, I think the experimentation is for the best. I will think back to it as the genre continues to evolve and others perfect sounds alluded to here.

Taake is back with a new album and I confess I feel disappointed for the first time. While Noregs Vaapen had some weird details, but not enough to affect the result as a whole, this new album sounds a bit more uninspired. It has some interesting riffs (first riff of Vinger, in the middle of Gamle Norig, some bridges in Det Fins En Prins, etc), but overall the songs have less to offer, flow in a more simple way, and above all, they flow with a different vibe: the album sounds a lot more "rockish" than all the previous Taake efforts. In fact, it reminds me of Satyricon's Volcano in several moments. Some of the riffs are also painfully generic without being followed by some memorable stuff, and that's my main complaint. When the riffs are good, it seems the Taake vibe will prevail... but then some mood killer part comes. A good example is the passage of track 1 (Gamle Norig) to track 2 (Orm). This second song clearly goes in a different direction (the above mentioned rockish direction) and even when the vibe changes (the choir at 4:04), well, the damage is already done.

I'm not trying to bash this album just because it doesn't please me, ignoring everything positive that the record has. Production sounds quite clear, Hoest voice sounds good as always and the record has definitively its moments. The drumming is nothing special, but I suppose it was not supposed to be otherwise. Judging the result as a whole, it's still Taake and this means this is far from bad. But comparing with the atmosphere of Taake's early works or some tracks in the latest records, Stridens hus is, without a doubt, inferior. Every record has high and lows, but the lows here are too uninspired for a band like Taake. In my opinion, these lows really compromises the way the record flows, switching the mood of the album to something really uninteresting. And that's too bad because I saw Taake as the leading force in Scandinavian black metal nowadays and now, I'm not so sure. I hope the next album puts the band in the place it belongs.

Without doubt the most pre-eminent name today under the ever-controversial banner of ‘True Norwegian Black Metal’, the one-man band that is Hoest of Taake has built an immense reputation that almost precedes the musical qualities contained within a discography six albums strong. It seems, for now, the complaints of racism, nationalism and um, exposure, have been put to bed, allowing the intense live persona and high quality recorded product of Hoest to become a much more admirable topic of discussion; justifiably so as 2008’s self-titled and 2011’s "Noregs vaapen" are two of the strongest black metal releases in years. Hoest’s technical abilities and imaginative knack for twisting the confined templates of the genre reached a peak in those two LPs that is not realised in the same manner here on "Stridens Hus", as a cleaner production and more predictable template soften the punch of these seven songs. Coincidence it might just be, but with Hoest recently appearing live shrouded deep within an enveloping, menacing hood, a similar sense of withdrawal appears to have overcome the music.

It should be noted that all seven tracks sound considerably longer than the 5-6 minutes most are (only "Det fins en Prins" at 8 minutes falls outside). Unlike numerous Norwegian BM practitioners who have blindly followed templates laid down by Darkthrone, Gorgoroth et al, the music of Taake has always been steadfastly busy and flecked with positive up-scales in note patterns, as heard often throughout this record. The soloing in "En Sang til Sand om Ildebrann" and "Orm" is not the only occasion when my mind is cast to fellow Norsemen Kvelertak, a band with whom Hoest has previously collaborated and appears to have taken a subtle punky influence from, although these instances are as noticeable for the very particular guitar tone heard which rests from far the predictable strained, trebly sound heard almost universally within black metal. Take "Kongsgaard bestaar" where the opening is of fluctuating, recognisable power chord patterns played at hypnotic pace, but this is quickly superseded by a downscaling of the distortion in a manner that would not be amiss in Shining. Repeating the pattern throughout the song, it adds to the uniqueness of Taake but lessens the impact that following track "Vinger" immediately commences with. Strongly influenced by Darkthrone, Hoest’s oxygen-starved howl kicks off a hammering rhythm interspersed with brief moments of very Nocturno Culto-esque finger-tapping as a knowing means of diversion from the core; the track also quietly adds some interesting percussive ‘trotting’ (for wont of a better descriptive) sounds. Like "Orm", where the mid-song solo has more than a touch of banjo twang to it, these two play in the joyous ‘fuck you’ attitude which has made the last LP’s "Myr" such a notable ride.

In an album of contrasts, where "Stank" plods on without really reaching a crescendo, "En Sang til Sand om Ildebrann" kicks off with greater purpose and displays Hoest’s talent for penning riffs that sound as if pulled from the very canon of Norwegian black metal yet which sound fresh and new. The foot-tapping tempo of these ensure an easy appreciation but it all just doesn’t match the high notes of Taake past - an impressive offering from one of the genre’s leading lights of underworld antagonisms but shorn of the sharpened spite making previous releases more delectable.

Originally written for Rockfreaks.net

Always one for tradition, enigmatic multi-instrumentalist and charismatic frontman Hoest has been on a strict schedule, releasing one seven-track album every third year since 1999. It’s December 2014, and as the first snow falls the time seems right for a new Taake-album. Although the 2011 outing Noregs Vaapen undeniably had its moments, the crowning jewel in Hoest’s discography remains his sprawling Nattestid/Bjoergvin/Doedskvad-trilogy. The gold standard of third wave Norwegian black metal, the trilogy differed from its successors by having a whole band participating in the songwriting, instead of just Hoest. It’s an exciting prospect, then, that Stridens Hus, which roughly translates to “House of Strife” or “House of War”, is the first Taake-release since Doedskvad featuring artistic input from Hoest’s live band. Perhaps this broadening of horizons will contribute to the grander atmosphere that made the trilogy so remarkable.

With three years to write and refine these seven songs, there is no shortage of good riffs throughout Stridens Hus. Album opener “Gamle Norig” feels like a return to the deep fjords of Hordaland, majestic in its atmospheric might. The icy cold guitars are classic Taake, with memorable hooks and rolling melodies, accentuated by Hoest’s traditional snarls and commandeering roars. Both the musical palette and the lyrical themes are recognizably nationalistic, which only adds to the uniqueness of that classic Taake-sound. The sweeping grandeur is punctuated with aggressive outbursts, giving the music a punky edge, which carries over into “Orm”. Sporting more of a rock and roll groove, things soon take a turn for the somewhat odd.

Now, it’s no secret that Hoest has a penchant for weird touches, most recently the infamous banjo-solo on “Myr”, but the scattershot rock and roll riffs, distorted effects, and wailing solos spread throughout Stridens Hus often feel completely misplaced, spoiling the otherwise solid atmospherics. On “Orm” the oddball riffs work, as they are purely transitional and really quite short. “Det Fins En Prins” goes one step further, interspersing the melodious sections with more furiously thrashy riffs, which makes for a varied number that nevertheless begins straining the album’s coherency. Beginning with “Stank”, the punk rock intensity and thumping riffs are starting to become wearisome, only broken up by a short out of place surf rock solo, before the song trails off to nowhere in particular with what sounds like a recycled Bjoergvin-riff.

As mentioned, if Hoest has spent the three years since Noregs Vaapen writing riffs, it feels as though he should have spent more time actually penning songs. The instrumental “En Sang Til Sand Om Ildebrann” is the worst offender here, sounding more like a series of previously unused riffs put together into something barely resembling an actual song. If you listen to Taake for the riffs, this probably won’t be much of a problem. However, if you are here for finely crafted songs you are likely to be very disillusioned by the latter half of Stridens Hus. On album closer “Vinger”, an Ildjarn-esque pounding riff is only relieved by the same old blackened thrash sound that Taake keeps returning to since their self-titled album. It’s a formula that is wearing thin, since there is little to set these tracks apart from other, better, blackened thrash bands.

If this sounds like an inordinate amount of scorn, I’ll reiterate that the first three tracks on Stridens Hus are genuinely good Taake material, weaving together a lot of the old and a touch of the new. Around the half-way mark it disappointingly starts falling apart, as the quality deteriorates into a somewhat jumbled mess of ideas. Of course this was never going to be the spiritual successor to Doedskvad, and there are some great parts throughout the album, but the unfocused lack of coherence mixed with the uninspired thrashy sections makes Stridens Hus an embodiment of going one step forwards and two steps back. As a result, this is merely an okay black metal album, and a weak one coming from Taake.


Written for The Metal Observer

Another traditional three year wait is over and Taake – one of the most respected black metal acts in history – are back with the sixth album “Stridens Hus,” which was released by Dark Essence Records. It’s unmistakably a Taake album, but new elements are applied once again, like Hoest usually does, as you’ll see in the next lines.

This new record kicks off with “Gamle Norig” comprising an initial solitary riff that’s cold and sharp opening way to the communion of all the other instruments and Hoest’s well-known voice. Without neglecting the frozen beginning, this song also presents more melodic moments.

Taake’s albums always have some good surprises and it’s not an entirely new sight if Hoest crosses this and that genre outside black metal, like in “Orm”, due to a blues oriented guitar solo that could be easily played by Stevie Ray Vaughn in his rockier incursions. Nevertheless, we soon get back to northern Europe because of ritualistic choirs. And is it pushing too hard by saying we can feel some Opeth in the track “Kongsgaard Bestaar”? I guess not, because if we put Åkerfeldt singing there instead of Hoest, we can easily have an Opeth song somewhere between 2000 and 2005 due to the full-bodied guitar riffs, but also due to calm and balanced solitary notes that can be heard in Opeth’s album “Blackwater Park”.

The sudden changing of riffs and structure within the same song is a constant in the album giving it a little progressive touch, and the using of echoed chords contributes to a modern sound that superimposes the severe black metal soundscape in the background. This “Stridens Hus” album also offers some long and melancholic roads in the track “Det Fins En Prins” just to let us be overwhelmed by simplistic and old school riffs that put us in Taake’s early days, like in “Stank”.

As I said in the beginning, “Stridens Hus” is unquestionably an album delivered by Taake and it won’t deceive the fervent followers, but I’ve felt that playing it safe was the main key to achieve a comfortable new record even if new elements were applied.

Originally written at www.againstmagazine.com