Misthyrming is one of those bands that I never quite know how I feel about their music. I keep revisiting their discography over and over again because of this. I don't know why this happens, but I'm very curious as to why it does.
This time through Söngvar elds og óreiðu sounds amazing. I remembered this album being boring and meandering through a bunch of pointless ideas... holy shit was I ever wrong about an album. Misthyrming have always been this enigma to me, I did not understand why people liked them. I could never get into them... I finally feel I can start to understand where they are coming from.
Misthyrming play a form of black metal that combines melodies with dissonance, ambience with overwhelming harshness, deep calm with abject terror. It's an album that is a paradox in every sense of the word, it's calming and terrifying at the same time.
The atmosphere and energy that the band has on their debut album is pretty unique. One minute it sounds like a standard black metal album, then the music will devolve into a jazz ridden blackened breakdown. Ambience will come out of no where and cloak the entire album in a shroud of mystery. Silence will overwhelm the listener in a blanket of darkness.
The thing is that none of the individual parts of the album are that unique in and of themselves. I've heard all of these things by themselves before... but I've never quite heard them put together like this. A melodic riff will devolve into dissonance and the reconstruct itself back into something my mind can wrap itself around. A horrifying yell/screech will fade out into ambience, only to be completely destroyed a few moments later in a whirlwind of horror.
This album is something I have been missing out on, its too good to ignore. It's been spinning non stop for nearly three days on my turn table. Now as my time with it comes to an end I'll be happy to admit that I was so very wrong about this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment