Beats and yelling: Sylvaine and the neofolk of it all

Eg Er Framand
Out 22^nd March on Season of Mist

Despite valiant attempts to the contrary, the imaginarium of metal remains stubbornly historical. The raw materials arranged into dense, rigid, highly formal structures may be philosophically agnostic, but they are more often than not painted with an explicitly (c)onservative, conservationist, traditionalist colour scheme. The failures of industrial metal or sci-fi thrash to gain any traction beyond novelty (notable exceptions aside) only corroborates this point.

Zooming in on the instinctive traditionalism of metal allows us to unpack the relationship between metal and neofolk, an allegiance that initially seems unclear, the latter being informal, loose, and negotiable in contrast to metal’s strict compositional discipline. Neofolk might have started as an offshoot of post punk and early industrial with a parallel yet totally distinct evolution to metal. But since the co-option of the term under the Wardruna of it all – the fault of commentators and not Wardruna themselves – it has been recast as a form of loosely defined metal adjacent ambient/folk with distinctively Northern European roots.

Despite the enormous popularity of this new, post-postmodern iteration of neofolk (sometimes cordoned off under the Nordic folk banner), it still tends to play second fiddle in the dietary habits of its increasingly large metal following. A proving ground, a way to unwind from the intense demands of a metal listening regime. Or else treated as experimental material for testing new aesthetics and techniques that might be applied in a metallic setting.

No doubt this reading underplays the potential of neofolk, darkwave, and dark ambient as a compositional forms in their own right. That being said, the strict segregation between these informal genres and the prohibitively policed compositional techniques of metal makes sense within my own set of preconceptions as a metal fan. Metal is primarily a way to construct, order, and manipulate musical language using methodologies that may overlap with its nearest neighbours, but stands apart as a distinct form of artistic communication.

By contrast, neofolk – in its modern iteration – is not quite there yet (Wardrunas of the world aside), primarily because it borrows so explicitly from actually existing folk music, which it will always be measured against, fairly or not. In this context, it may therefore best be understood as a set of colour palettes that could be applied to the underlying architecture of metal’s substantive riff based language. Breaking down these barriers by leveraging ambient/neofolk/darkwave as compositional forms within an explicitly metal aesthetic sidelines the importance of the riff within metal, thus neutering it of its greatest strength as an artform, and tends to rob neofolk of its peripheral mysticism in the process.

This is essentially what post metal has become in recent years. It’s not the alchemy of techniques and aesthetics in itself that should be lamented, but the fact that the outcome leaves us with less than the sum of the parts. And along with Alcest, Sylvaine have become one of the leading practitioners of this race to the bottom.

Sylvaine’s latest album ‘Eg Er Framand’ however, is noteworthy for embracing this segregation. The result is predictably far more rewarding than anything this artist has produced to date, with previous output embodying these futile attempts to marry the passivity of neofolk with the activism of metal.

We are treated to an austere, static, work of lyrical ambience, using themes lifted from traditional Norwegian folk songs. The result could be read as a literal version of Biosphere’s ‘Departed Glories’, the latter being an abstract work of artificial hauntology, whereas ‘Eg Er Framand’ is explicitly musical, organic, human, expressive. The religiosity is front and centre, with rich vocal harmonies, droning organ tones, and minimalist melodic flourishes mirroring the contours of church bells, littering the music as ghostly yet familiar faces. String ensembles and a scattering of tentative clean guitars complete the timbral picture, each instrument leveraging its inherent, physical features to deliver percussive or textural material over substantive musical content.

But the chief driver of these pieces is Sylvaine’s haunting vocal threnodies. She acts as her own backing section as simple but intuitive harmonies gradually develop over the course of a piece, circling a single theme, gently prodding it from various angles before rounding it off with a musical if not a spiritual resolution.

By zooming in on one specific preoccupation, it allows Sylvaine to fully explore life in miniature, emphasising contrast and consonance to a greater degree than we used to due to the highly limited textural package. Whilst the open ended nature of these pieces still allows us to fairly call this neofolk, the echoes of choral music add an underlayer of structuralism that aligns it with ambient. Paradoxically, it is the abandonment of any attempt to integrate a metal backdrop that will most ingratiate this album to a metal fanbase, who will appreciate both the excavation of pre-modern musical forms and the elegantly simple structuralism that quietly defies the underlying entropy.