Black metal, Bergen, Norway, this Nattverd’s second album. Piercing screams, dirty riffs, violence …. and so the album begins with “Slakt dem, der de loeper hoedenloese rundt ballet”. It attacks and marches. The echoing roars continue. Maybe my antenna is skewed these days but I found this catchy. Well let’s call it interesting. You know you’re in the middle of a furious whirlwind listening to this song of slaughter. The pace cranks up for “Dragsvoll”, all black metal of course. Again dark and dirty, it goes on at a fair lick save its sections of menace and defiles us as it does so. It’s chaos out there. It fades out with a long passage. I like the fact that Nattverd don’t just get it over and done with, and develop their atmospheres but in this case I felt the end of “Dragsvoll” didn’t take anywhere we didn’t already know about.
Surprisingly “Skoddeskot” starts symphonically. Two minutes of ethereal ambience is not what I expected and I’m not sure where it fitted in to anything, but Nattverd shake this off and we’re back to the usual turbulent chaos and overall heavy terror laden attack. The tales from a cold world continue with “Heksebrann”, another twisted and furious number but this time with epic elements. The title translates as “Witch Fire” and beyond that I don’t know what it’s about in spite of its spoken passages, but it’s safe to say that it’s not pleasant as it builds up atmospherically to its climax. “Gatelangs i land og rike” seems like a continuation, and scores highly as ever on the violence and intensity scale but is outdone by its more atmospheric predecessor “Heksebrann”. It sounds if the witches are back on “Gamle Erik” as deranged chanting provides the beginning before making way for the familiar razor blade riff. All hell breaks loose as chaos and darkness descend. Good old Erik. The continuity is broken, but after the break the swirling sounds combine again with the leaden rhythm, which keeps us in our place. Now we’re on a war march. “Hedninger av en svart verden” (Pagans of a Black World). The battle lines are drawn, the echoing vocals add spice and horror. “Guds djevelske naervaer” (God’s Devilish Presence) proceeds along the same lines. It’s straight from the playgrounds of Hell, but in spite of the impressive screams and array of atmospheric ghastliness, this doesn’t get out of fourth gear, an impression I’d had previously from parts of this album.
I got Nattverd’s wish to mix it up a bit and thought this worked to varying degrees but it’s the raw black metal which is clearly their trademark. It’s dirty and nasty and cold as black metal should be. Nothing you won’t have heard before really but it’s done very well.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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