Written in Waters

This album does not perform as advertised. I wanted jazzy, arty black metal. This is more like a prog rock band having a go at black metal. Weirdly, they manage to come across as both random and predictable, the songs sounding like a series of related segments stitched together end-to-end, each ending exactly on its preordained cue. In that sense, it reminds me a little of early Opeth. You may find that harsh, but I'm only being honest. It feels a lot like rock music without choruses (i.e. it does not rock), a fact made more apparent by hearing Czral's later band Virus, which sounds like this only with the last traces of black metal extracted.

The moaned vocals are not welcome either. There are a couple of other post-black metal bands that have used a similar dramatically-spoken style and achieved a comparable level of listener discomfort.

I used to think this was an album that I might eventually grow to enjoy more, but weathering some of the other more “artistically-inclined” bands to come out of Norway since black metal's ignominious death has put it in a new context, and I've grown less sympathetic. Instead of being an obscure and avant-garde exponent of the classic Norse scene, they look more like a prophecy of the spazziness to come. This is pre-post-black metal. Not to be too predictable, but I prefer the parts that sound the most like normal black metal.

I can't say that I don't like it at all, since they mutate the old style of cold Thorns chords in some pretty interesting ways, but I still don't like it all that much. No proper songs, stitched composition – maybe a bit too postmodern for me.