With the previous success of the debut album fresh in my mind I had to go back to Algleymi to see if it had a similar change for me. I've been listening for a few hours at this point and I think that Algleymi was the album that largely formed my opinion on the band. While it does have something to offer, its nowhere near as powerful or potent as the debut album.
The first few tracks of Alglemyi pick up right where Söngvar elds og óreiðu left off. Interesting musical progressions, tasteful use of ambience and dissonance. These two songs in particular are exceptionally strong and start the album off with a bang. From there the album starts to falter a bit.
The band have decided to incorporate overdrive into one of the guitars rather that full on distortion. This is normally something that works pretty well within black metal, but for whatever reason it doesn't do anything for me here... in fact it makes the album sound rather anemic compared to the more distortion oriented tracks.
I think what happens is the music is missing the intensity of the debut. It's there from time to time, but this has more of a methodical and plodding feeling for most of the album. Again this is not inherently a bad thing, its just not what I'm looking for from Misthyrming.
Whereas the debut's riffs were dynamic and often dissonant. The riffs throughout Algleymi are slower and repeat to an almost unwelcome degree. I wouldn't mind this as much if it was spaced out throughout the album but almost 70-80% of the album is done in this style, and almost all of the songs are back to back. It's just not for me.
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