A Year of Music

For me, and I suspect a lot of other people, Viking metal is musical comfort food: not too challenging, not especially good for me, but very satisfying. While there are exceptions (on the progressive end, Enslaved; on the wanky end, Moonsorrow), most Viking metal follows a standard template: growled death metal vocals, loads of subdued keyboards, occasional clean classical guitar breaks, folk melodies and instruments (penny whistle, bagpipes, concertina, Jew’s harp), and lots of the broadly consonant, epic chord progressions and harmonies that are viewed with suspicion in most mainstream metal. Viking metal really owes more to NWOBHM bands like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest than it does to folk music.

Though it gets very little coverage in the English-speaking metal mainstream (such as it is) this stuff is very popular in Scandinavia and Central Europe. Every time a reviewer says something bad about Ensiferum or Windir on the web, a horde of angry young men materialize out of nowhere to heap scorn and threats of bloody, fiery death on the offender, generally in grammatically correct, stiff English. It’s sort of endearing in the same way that the apocryphal old stories of mobs of Scandinavian teens throwing bottles and bricks at Cradle of Filth’s tour van are: it’s nice to know that the kids care.

Thyrfing are a decidedly middle of the road band, and Urkraft is a thoroughly average album. The production sounds like the band pressed the “TÄGTGREN” button on their mixing console: meaty, chugging guitars, taut drum sounds (maybe triggered, maybe not), and a nice, clean mix that emphasizes the guitars without obscuring the vocals and the keyboards. For all its midrange chug and growled vocals, this music is essentially ambient task music: it’s music for drinking beers with friends, or playing role-playing games, or hacking out code, or reading Raymond E. Feist novels. If Thyrfing were making black metal they’d be Dark Funeral, and if they were making thrash they’d be Machine Head circa The Burning Red – there’s nothing here that’s going to blow your mind, but it’s eminently enjoyable for what it is.

Stuck in head this morning: Torche’s “Fire”, a two and a half minute buzzbomb of droning catchy pop melodies running on consonant bass-heavy stoner metal rails. The fact that the lyrics are apparently sung in some otherworldly foreign key (which they keep in harmony, despite being at least half a semitone sharp throughout the song) only adds to its wayward charm, although it makes it somewhat awkward to have stuck in your head. I keep trying to force the singing into tune, but my brain won’t let me.

This song, more than any other in Torche’s catalog, lays bare their debt to Jane’s Addiction, who I would describe as “long gone and lamented” if they – especially Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro – had not so badly overstayed their welcome. As it is, their inescapable sensi frat-boy hijinx keep me from forgetting how the jocks in the dorms used to play Ritual de lo Habitual every day, sure as morning wood.

This is the life we chose, the life we lead. And there is only one guarantee: none of us will see Heaven.

I, uh, I don’t really know what to say about Abigor’s Fractal Possession. Beyond saying I’m sorry I ever doubted them (in the wake of the tepid Satanized), and ever having said anything snarky about this album. Fractal Possession is stunning and sui generis.

So, here’s a précis: Abigor. Austrian 3-piece with a revolving membership, no bass player, and the style of rattletrap pell-mell drumming that owes more to old grindcore (with its double-footed oatmeal box kick drums) than death metal’s bass-heavy rolling thunder. Possessed of a singular guitarist who can twist the whole chaotic mess around his finger and turn it into something grandiose and beautiful all by himself. Never make the same album twice. Fond of stealing samples from Dom & Roland, who probably stole them all from somebody else.

This album pushes all sorts of buttons for me, with its high-velocity prog/black/technical death metal warped into all kinds of strange shapes by the promiscuous borrowing from industrial, drum’n’bass and metalcore. Samples from Road to Perdition are juxtaposed with Abigor’s inimitable overdubbed twin-lead guitar pyrotechnics and random doomcore synth blats. And just to keep you on your toes, whenever the density peaks and it starts to blur into saminess, things ease up and get more melodic. It’s really quite something. I like it so much I had to listen to the whole thing all the way through twice, which I almost never do.