ALBUM REVIEW: Wrapped In Mist – Helga

There’s something about modern folk influences that allows something other worldly to permeate the music. What HELGA do is keep the confidence and bulk of progressive sounds, while playing with the ethereal in tone and vocals. This innate sense of curiosity and malleability throughout the record allows their debut album Wrapped In Mist to shine and captivate.

As you’d expect from a band who take a large variety of influences, percussion is a big element of what makes HELGA work. Their ability to know when to lean into polyrhythms and dynamic patterns, and when to strip back into more reserved playing where the beat serves to move the other instruments along is very well done.

There’s so much to connect with through Wrapped In Mist, like Burden as it moves from bombastic progressive sounds, to sweet cleans and calming vocals. The way HELGA approach the uncertain and comfortingly resolve the intricate melodic lines of both voice and instrument is beautiful and begs for repeat listens. From the post-rock stylings of Som En Trumma to the subdued Vast And Wild, these intimate tracks feel both small and personal, and expansive and universal. It’s a hard line to walk, but it feels like HELGA have been doing this for years already.

If Death Comes Now is a defiant contemplation of our remaining time before the end. The elements of shoegaze are much more apparent in these softer songs, the shuffle of the beat and gentle reverb of the guitars filling you with sombre curiosity about the track’s themes. As things reach a more climatic end, the intricacies of the song cascade apart, like the body and mind as death finds us. But there’s no sense of torment or fear, rather acceptance and grace in the idea of that final moment.

If you are looking for a darker tinge, then in contrast songs like Farväl will tick the box no question. A more aggressive song from the off, it begins with a bone chilling scream that resurfaces throughout as the track leans into a much more subversive black metal sound. It’s still as grounded and beautiful, but much rawer, and in pushing into a blackened style it demonstrates the huge breadth of their sound and the directions that HELGA can go without feeling out of step with the overall pallet they paint with.

HELGA really submit to the needs of their music; they play with conviction and skill in all genres without compromising on the overarching tone that allows them to stand out. The longing for nature, the grapple with our own minds and the road to overcoming adversity all wrap up in this collection of strongly emotive songs. Wrapped In Mist is an evocative and serene experience that should speak to one and all alike.

Rating: 8/10

Wrapped In Mist is out not via Season Of Mist.

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