Review: Vildhjarta – + dar skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +
Please don’t make me write out any more of these song titles…
Vildhjarta is an interesting band, I personally found out about them a few years ago when I was in the middle of a month long Meshuggah binge; I’ve grown to view them as two sides of the same coin. Both bands are Djent (or the elusive THALL for Vildhjarta) acts from Sweden, both use extended range guitars tuned lower than you could generally achieve on bridge cables, and both have been around long enough now to be considered the forefathers of their genre. Meshuggah I feel embodies the pinnacle of rhythmic complexity while Vildhjarta shines the most with their melodic complexity. Ironically if you combined the two bands I’m not sure if you’d either end up with something mindblowing or absolutely dog water and I don’t think it could end up anywhere between. Enough with the comparisons though, Vildhjartaha’s returned after 4 (very long) years with a new record titled + dar skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + (this will be the only time I write that whole thing out), and the record itself is every bit as long and dense as that behemoth of an album title. Containing 12 tracks (all of which have names I really don’t feel like typing) at a length of just under an hour, this thing is huge… Like actually I’m a little afraid of it, I’ve been heavily procrastinating on this review because there’s just so much to cover, but here goes nothing.
The record that shall not be named begins with a song that I wish I didn’t have to write the name of “+buya ut alla stjarnor pa himlen mot plustecken +,” which opens with atmospheric echoes and beautiful sweeping harmonics. This is closely followed by an explosion of down-tuned guitar and drums in the form of a highly-distorted dissonant melody which does a great job of setting the tone for this record. It’s a lot slower and more melodic than anything they’ve done previously, every bar has been precisely planned and executed, every second of this enormous record has this feeling of intentionality to it that I haven’t been able to place with nearly anything else I’ve listened to. The closest thing I can liken the experience to is holding an ancient, handcrafted Damascus blade, every fold in the steel intentionally done to create a larger ornate pattern across the entirety of the piece, every engraving and minute detail having a reason for being where it is in the context of the whole product. There is no doubt in my mind that they spent the entirety of the last 4 years putting this record together. Moving a track further into the record, “+roda lappar, sota applen+” starts with a really cool and unique blend of reverb-soaked, harmonic-filled guitar lines layered underneath a brutal 8-string djent-fest and Vildhjarta’s signature nasty guttural vocals. Eventually that ambient layer fades out and not long after the beat speeds up, blast beats roar into the mix and the whole track practically explodes with energy, low-tuned chugs and highly-saturated top end flourishes ensue. It’s a proverbial feast for djent fans, and I’d argue highly enjoyable for nearly anyone else.
This record is unbelievably detailed, and while I think that does tend to work in its favor, at least for old school djent fans, I do also think that’s one of the things I get tired of the most with this album. With how much they’ve put into every second of this project it has a tendency to get repetitive after a while. I think all of my positive remarks from the last paragraph hold true for any of the individual tracks, but it can be a daunting task to sit and listen to the whole album from front to back in one sitting. I think this record could be better if it were released as a trilogy of EPs rather than one enormous record, something like what Nine Inch Nails did with their last three EPs having been released each year between 2016 and 2018. To do each track the justice it deserves it could work better to release it with just a couple others so that it gets to stand on its own a bit more. For instance, when you listen to an album front to back you primarily tend to remember the opener, the closing track, and possibly a couple of standouts throughout the album, but remembering what happened in say, track 5 of a 12-track, hour-long record can be very difficult. This is compounded by the fact that all tracks here are very stylistically similar, and have names that aren’t easily memorable; I struggle to remember what happened in most of them which is a huge shame given the amount of effort and skill that have obviously been put into this.
This conclusion is a hard one for me: on one hand, I absolutely love just about all of the individual tracks in this record; they’re highly detailed, finely-crafted songs that I really do think deserve a listen, but I just don’t feel the motivation to listen to it anymore. I’m more than willing to admit that I’m not the best at this, and that certainly plays a part into how this review came together. At the end of the day I figure writing down my honest feelings about what I’m listening to is the best way to inform all of you about what you may get out of listening to this yourselves. I highly recommend listening to this record, maybe not all at once though, take your time with it, maybe even take it a track at a time; I think that’s the most enjoyable way to experience it. In closing, I give this album…
3/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
+ där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is out today on Bandcamp.
