V.

For whatever reason I'd forgotten about the fantastic 'Saga' album that these guys dropped a few years back, but shuffle on itunes is one great ol' thing and here I am, back on the bandwagon of one of the most sorely underrated bands going around. I know it's perhaps not the most exciting review when it's just full of gushing praise but sometimes it's warranted- these guys are a real good band, and while V. may have a confusing full stop in its' title, everything else about it is pretty freakin prime.

What I like about this album is that it's full of long form, ambitious songwriting- 7 songs, 1 hour- but it never drags, never feels forced, there's no "eat your veges before you get dessert" approach. Just cool, proggy/folky noodles which mix it up with big, kinda stoner-y doom riffs and a decent amount of Bergtatt/Pale Folklore thrown on top, with an atmosphere that's thicker than Venus. I get that it's a bit wanky, a bit vague to go on about how this album brings forth all these images of dudes on fjords, watching the aurora and eating putrefied shark in the middle of winter, but it's hard to deny that it's a pretty evocative old album. Great when driving through forests, that sort of stuff.

Interesting to reflect on what makes this good when stuff like Skagos, Ashbringer, Wolves in the Throne Room etc. bores me to tears so much. I mean this isn't Cascadian Black Metal, but it's probably a close enough relative. I think it's the riffs- sure, this isn't the heaviest album ever and it would be nice if they occasionally really went for the throat. But the heavy parts are pretty insistent, and tend not to consist of bad "chord progressions, but tremelo picked" type deals. It's probably also that the songwriting is a million times better- never a dull moment.

I dunno, perhaps it's everything. It's the way that the clean guitar parts are a lot more than just arpeggios, and just as pleasurable as any of the louder bits. It's the reverb soaked clean vocals and how they float all ghostly like in the mix. You can go on and on.. how it's often quite "pretty" but refuses to get anywhere near your Falloch Enya-with-distortion type stuff, how the production is that perfect mix of raw but still clear, so on and so forth.

Great album, great band.. I figure there's no point singing praises for another 15 paragraphs, though I could. Buy or die.