ALBUM REVIEW: Völd – Nyrst
Since changing their name from SKUGGSJA in 2016, NYRST have very quickly established themselves as one of the most promising acts to come out of Iceland’s impressive black metal scene in recent years. Their debut album, 2020’s Orsök, laid down some exceptionally solid foundations for their music, which veers from ethereal melodicism through to grating dissonance, making for a broad-ranging sound that covers both extremes within black metal. And now their latest album, Völd, builds upon the many strengths of their last album and, rather than changing the band’s formula too drastically, tweaks and tightens some of the best elements to create a much more powerful and focused record.
Völd is a razor sharp and foreboding piece of music, with biting leads and cavernous drums underpinned by weighty ambience and dense, expansive vocals which all contribute to a varied and powerful sound right off the bat. Shifting seamlessly from polished, thunderous black metal hooks through to more bombastic sections, it’s a track with a lot of drama and character built into it, sounding utterly monolithic and peppering in slick melodies and discordance at different points to make this even more eclectic and keep the listener engrossed.
Sundra Skal Sálu opts for a cleaner, eerier guitar sound that makes this sound incredibly sinister, with the huge, dirge-like rhythms and sonorous vocals only adding to the doom-laden and bleak feel of this song, gradually transforming into a much darker piece of music as it progresses. Hrímvíti is a much faster and more urgent slab of catchy black metal; it has some extremely inspired performances on all fronts, with imaginative leads, energetic, percussive drums and animated vocal deliveries all making this feel a lot more spirited and intense than the preceding two offerings. Those haunting, choir-like chants make an appearance again, injecting an epic edge into proceedings that alters the tone and feel of the music as it reaches its climactic crescendo.
Fjallið Andar – a short, atmospheric instrumental affair – serves as a fleeting but immersive interlude between the album’s two halves, stripping away the metal elements entirely and leading into the second half in an impressive fashion. The dissonance-tinged Eilíft Eldhaf adopts the speed-driven formula of the last track and applies a leaner, more visceral side to it, which allows the excellent vocals and jarring riffs to carry this song at various points. Cleaner guitar and vocal flourishes are added as it develops to push the music once again into decidedly more grandiose Viking metal territories, before reverting to the tight, intricate extremity that it began on, accentuating just how visceral this particular song is compared to those on the album’s first half.
Drottnari Nafnlausra Guða is a sprawling, soaring track with a slow-burning approach; it begins as a fairly steady affair, with authoritative drums and subdued guitar work crafting a lighter but nonetheless impactful sound as the searing vocals carve through the mix and add some density. As the music passes the halfway mark, it takes on a more chaotic and cacophonous style, with grating guitars, ferocious growls and domineering rhythms turning this into a much harder, harsher slab of black metal than even the most aggressive track to feature earlier on the album, before slowly winding down into an ominous sound coupled with booming vocals to bring this diverse and adventurous climactic offering to a close. Af Fjarri Ströndum brings together the brooding discordance and cavernous undercurrent that makes many of these tracks so impressive, throwing in lots of melodicism and galloping, rumbling drums to tie together a lot of the subtler elements that work well on this album, making this not only a fantastic closing track, but a brilliant summation of this band and album’s core sound.
Völd is one of those albums that does a great job of blending together several different black metal styles and makes them work well in harmony with each other, bringing together slick melodies as well as feral discordance, polished atmospheric touches in amongst murkier moments, and thereby making it an album that could conceivably possess something that could appeal to almost any kind of black metal fan. NYRST have done an excellent job of developing the sound present on their debut album and perfecting some of the finer bits to make this an even leaner and more adventurous record than its predecessor, whilst remaining just as punchy and impactful. It’s genuinely one of the best black metal albums to come out of Iceland in the last few years, and shows that that scene and the musicians within it are still as creative and vibrant as ever.
Rating: 8/10
Völd is out now via Dark Essence Records.
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