(Andy Synn kicks off his week with the new album from Dödsrit, out Friday)
There’s a certain type of person – trust me, I’ve encountered them a fair few times – who becomes inordinately angry if you try to talk about Dödsrit as being a “Black Metal” band.
But, of course, I highly doubt that Dödsrit themselves are all that fussed about the ongoing “he said, she said” of whether or not they’re “Black Metal enough” for the purists (surely that would be antithetical to the whole ethos of the genre anyway?) since they’ve been far too busy building an impressive career for themselves, on their own terms, to care about such petty concerns.
However – and here’s where things get interesting – the question of whether or not Dödsrit are still a Black Metal band, or how much of one they are, is actually very relevant when it comes to the release of their new album… though, perhaps, not quite in the way you might expect.
You see, it’s not about whether or not the band are “cool” enough to hang with their more “kvlt” cousins – for one thing, as I’m sure you can tell, the band’s aesthetic has always been far more Crust-Punk than corpse-paint – it’s about whether that’s still the right way to look at the band at all on Nocturnal Will.
Because although there’s certainly an underlying undercurrent of blackened power to much of the music (the moments where the quartet really cut loose are as fiery and ferocious as a volcanic eruption), it’s clear that the focus has shifted even more towards magnificent melody and heroic hooks, with a particular emphasis on grandiose guitar harmonies and soaring solos.
That’s not unheard of in Black Metal by any means – after all, many of the genre’s most seminal bands displayed an unrepentant passion for melody too – but the shift towards an even more brash and bombastic approach (interspersed with poignant passages of moody introspection) feels like it owes more to the “classic” era of Melodic Death Metal (second-half instrumental “Utmed Gyllbergens Stig” in particular, for better or for worse, could have been taken right from the Jester Race/Whoracle era) than ever.
Of course, regardless of whatever terms, tags, or tropes you assign to the band, the proof is always in the music itself – a rose by any other name, and all that – and while I’ve come to the conclusion that Nocturnal Will is a slight step down from its outstanding predecessor when all is said and done (which has nothing to do with how “blackened” it may or may not be) the high points on this album are more than worth the price of admission, with special mention reserved for the electrifying intensity and infectious, punky energy of “Irjala”, the captivating catharsis of “Nocturnal Fire”, and epic, constantly-building-towards-crescendo closer “Celestial Will”.
Sure, I’d say that the band’s choice to go even bigger and bolder this time around (though Nocturnal Will is actually slightly shorter than Spirit Crusher) has cost them some of their crispness and concision – honestly, if you cut out the superfluous middle two tracks (a potentially controversial suggestion, I know), and maybe trim some of the more self-indulgent moments of “As Death Comes Reaping” (which could easily stand to lose a minute or two) you’d have an altogether leaner and meaner, all-killer no filler, fat-free version of the record – but Dödsrit are still very much the same instantly identifiable, absolutely undeniable, band they always were, and whether you love them or loathe them the one thing you won’t be able to do is ignore them.