ALBUM REVIEW: Endling – Kvelertak
Opening a box of chocolates can be deliciously disastrous. On one hand, it’s a truffle-shaped taste sensation; on the other, it’s easy enough to binge-eat a box in minutes, your overindulgence rewarded with unwanted bloat. Listening to KVELERTAK’s fifth album Endling straddles the two sides of that same (chocolate) coin.
Opener Krøterveg Te Helvete spends nearly three of its eight minutes masquerading as post-rockers marauding the Nordic mountains — that is to say, there’s nothing much to say. Chiming piano keys and sparse drum fills run like the undercurrent of a stream as 70s hard rock riffs roll over like the sun is rising, a picture of pinky purples fading into blue. By the time it finishes, you’ve all but felt they’ve reinvented the wheel, only worse.
Whilst Fedrekult snatches back the black ‘n’ roll beat-em-ups from the LED ZEPPELIN-posers, but its cauldron-brewed potion of 70s hard rock, black ‘n’ roll, and blastbeat-worshipping 90s black metal just isn’t strong enough to knock your socks off. Thankfully, the double whammy of three-minute bangers Likvoke and Motsols arrive to revive your soul like true love’s first kiss; the former frothing at the mouth with old-school DIO-esque power chords that prove KVELERTAK are at their best when they’re partying into oblivion, whilst the latter transforms TURBONEGRO into a power-pop black ‘n’ roll band, causing absolute chaos with dual-harmonic screams and cleans colliding like the Greek gods in the sky.
But Endling is a tale of two halves. Its first five tracks flirt insatiably with reinventing the very same wheel they gave the world over a decade ago; side B serves up every genre under the sun like the all-you-can-eat buffets all-inclusive resorts roll out. Much like navigating the buffet, some of it sounds delicious, and some of it not so much. Let’s not beat around the bush, some of it’s not worth piling on your plate. Døgeniktens Kvad is black metal for barn dancers, blast-beats and dissonance do battle with banjo-vibes and country-rock twangs, whilst Skoggangr’s six-minutes injects the 70s blues rock bravado of LED ZEPPELIN and DEEP PURPLE with the psychedelic, prog-rock charm of latter-day BARONESS and MASTODON in a way that screams out potential for KVELERTAK’s future, whilst quite not reaching it yet.
But then there’s the chef’s kiss servings you simply cannot deny. Svart September’s descent from summery 60s acoustics into groove-laden, funk-driven mid-00s garage rock, like THE HIVES and THE WHITE STRIPES on a bar crawl through hell, is arguably made for losing your mind to live. Whilst the title track refreshingly does away with Ivar Nikolaisen’s growling howls in favour of clean vocals that compliment the groovy power-pop riffs that make you wanna ride off into the sunset strip. It’s clear that guitarist Vidar Landa and bassist Marvin Nygaard’s power-pop side-project BEACHHEADS has reared its radio-friendly head on Endling, here for better, but not always.
Endling, in all its glory, is a frustrating box of chocolates to chomp your way through on a Saturday night. Its six and seven-minute monoliths are far too overindulgent to hit the mark, whilst its three-minute bangers remind you why only KVELERTAK can mix power-pop and black metal in a way that makes you wanna dance and mosh simultaneously. After 2020’s Splid, Endling should’ve been their crowning confectionary, but it’s back to the drawing board instead.
Rating: 7/10
Endling is set for release on September 8th via Rise Records/Petroleum Records.
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