ALBUM REVIEW: Udåd – Udåd
A fair amount of time has elapsed since the genre-defining likes of MAYHEM and DARKTHRONE first erupted from the most wretched and blackly putrescent depths of the abyss to visit fiery sacrilege and bloodshed upon their painfully conservative and God-fearing, middle class communities – a full three decades and counting, to be exact. Yet, however much the genre may have since expanded and progressed into territories as varied as the sweepingly operatic, ritualistic and achingly melancholic, there persists the almost unanimously popular opinion that slavish adherence to this early, decidedly embryonic blueprint is the sole determinant by which to quantify a band’s ‘trve cvlt’ credentials.
Without question, these intensely visceral, tremolo-stricken trappings continue to figure prominently throughout the genre and its myriad different modern offshoots and variants. And as an acclaimed Norwegian musician with a well-documented passion for the old school, it’s easy to appreciate creator Thomas Eriksen’s attachment to this evidently sizeable chunk of his sonic identity.
Having earmarked primary musical venture MORK as an outlet for the aforementioned solo artist’s more intricate and richly layered creative inclinations, newly-established project UDÅD serves the sole, blissfully uncomplicated purpose of scratching an ever-persistent itch for something altogether more pared-back and nostalgic. But in annexing his sound off to this classic but stylistically constraining variant, we might be led to question how far debut full-length Udåd enables its creator to traverse fresh and compositionally distinctive musical territories.
But despite being emphatically self-described by Eriksen as the stuff of decidedly grim and frostbitten, unadulterated extremity, this sizeable body of riff-laden black metal comprises an altogether more leisurely paced affair than its creator might initially have led us to believe. Through expansive passages of meandering, distortion-drenched fretwork and bloodcurdling cries of abject torment, Udåd takes ample time to weave its numerous layerings of elegantly unravelling, distortion-drenched riffery. With its repetitious musical symmetries going no small distance to creating a pleasingly meditative listening experience, this is a sound richly steeped in ink-black atmospherics.
Like the desolate pleas of the damned eerily dissipating into the ether, the multi-instrumentalist’s howling, uniquely agonised vocal delivery is genuinely disquieting at moments. That said, the lo-fi production adopted here sometimes detracts from their overall potency and impact, with these bloodcurdling cries sitting somewhat low and murky in the mix above a turbulent mass of darkly churning riffage. Furthermore, with intentionally diminished emphasis on complexity, the more stark and minimalist likes of Vondskapens Triumf tend to border on the overly repetitive, their heavy and unwieldy pacing leaving more impatient ears itching for a momentary break or tempo shift in what appears to be a somewhat compositionally linear and simplistic approach.
That said, this is a nevertheless solidly rendered album that perfectly brings to fruition its underpinning agenda of evoking the classic spirit of black metal in its most delectably scabrous and stripped-back, traditional form. And beyond these thoroughly nostalgic trappings, there’s also more than a smattering of darkly transporting brilliance at play here, with Blodnatten’s intoxicating fusion of bristling tremolo and elegantly flourishing fretwork, in particular, abounding with a deathly majesty far removed from this earthly realm. But, as Eriksen made abundantly clear in the album’s accompanying press release, this is an entity for whom cold and starkly monochromatic carnage is the foremost, all-consuming priority – above and before all else – which is precisely what this record accomplishes in primal, pitch-black abundance.
Rating: 7/10
Udåd is set for release on March 15th via Peaceville Records.
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