Style: Black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Man's fight against nature... and it's perpetual failure
Thoughts: I'm going to be honest, I bought this album because of the cover. The rough sketch of an abandoned town next to a large body of water told a story of tribulation in a way that covers never can. What happened here? Why was the town abandoned? What brought them here in the first place? All of these questions swirled around in my head as I looked at the cover. The fact that this is good music on the record itself is a fortunate side effect.
Friisk play black metal, no frills black metal. Two guitars, one bass, drums and vocals. No gimmicks.
The results of this is two fold: the band does not really do anything new with their album, however they do it so well that it's hard to ignore. The strongest aspect of Friisk's music is the atmosphere. It has a sense of constant turmoil, a fight against a power greater than oneself. The fact that the band is able to create something so engaging with only the aforementioned instruments is truly noteworthy.
I tend to view the music in the album as the audio equivalent of the cover. The music chronicles the struggle that the village inhabitants endured before they ultimately had to admit defeat and abandon their homes. In every track (including the intro), the strife is palatable. Every not is dripping with desperation and fear. Fear of the inevitable.
This is the only full length of the band, but they do have a couple of splits and an EP to their name as well. While I have not yet heard those recordings, that is going to be remedied soon. In the meantime I'm going to be listening to their full length a few more times.
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