Beats and yelling: Vargrav

Dimension: Daemonium
Out 17^th April on Werewolf

Finland’s Vargrav return for another bout of outrageously dense symphonic black metal. Resembling Gnipahålan in their attempt to physically overwhelm the listener with impenetrable waves of guitar and synth led noise, layers that create the illusion of activity despite an axiomatic simplicity locatable at the foundational level. Vargrav remain compelling not in their capacity as a sonic throwback – which they very much are – but in their anachronistic attitude, a diamond of modernist sincerity in an otherwise irony strewn rough. There is no gloss of apathy, comedy, or pretence, no attempt to soften the presentation with subtlety, nuance, or the duality of meaning so often craved by a contemporary audience. Further, what sets them apart from garden variety pastiche is that their deployment of nostalgic regalia appears almost incidental. Their enthusiasm for black metal at its most outrageous, lavish, opulent, and uninhibited comes across as refreshingly one dimensional and sincere, driven by anything but a cynical desire to stoke affection from a retromania hungry audience.

Beyond the vintage of their style is the sheer intensity of Vargrav’s delivery. Symphonic black metal is an artform that makes a virtue of what some consider to be vulgar traits, and Vargrav push this to such an extent that it could almost be read as a provocation. The excess of expression, the drama heightened without ceiling, musicians giving themselves license to indulge their most hysterical romanticist fantasies. Such a disposition is anathema to vast streeks of modern music fandom who consider themselves to be subtle, reserved, understated in both taste and demeanour. This has led many newer artists into believing that they must smooth off the rougher edges of symphonic black metal, either through ironic disconnect or a literal subduing of theatrical excess. Vargrav, for all their flaws, rebut this impulse, reaching for the subgenre’s outer extremities with gusto, fashioning a musical expression that could get by on sheer will alone if necessary.  

But there is meat on these – already rather ornate – bones. For the most part we are treated to a heavily compressed barrage of guitar lines and double bass blasts certainly, but the material does occasionally allow itself to breathe with atmospheric breaks and richly textured keyboard material. The latter of which offer a near constant accompaniment to the guitars through various string and choral tones, intermittently segmenting into lead material with twinkly arpeggios that are both a welcome compliment to the guitars and scope out a degree of clarity in melodic intent often missing from the swelling waves of symphonic material making up the body of this album. Nods to more primal black metal traditions are also traceable, the Bathory proximate intro to ‘Dragons of Nightmare’ for example, demonstrating a more expansive vision from this artist despite the album being frontloaded with a near comedic degree of fanfare.

Despite this, all is tightly bound in Vargrav’s by now trademark highly strung, fraught, rampaging brand of orchestral black metal. But there is delicate brushwork at the molecular level. Real thought has been put into the minutest detail, ditto how these atomic elements feed into a landscape rife with conflict and contrast that nevertheless martials itself into forward motions. The presentation and performance appears to be deliberately calibrated to obscure any nuance, it’s as if we are being actively obstructed from beholding the music with any degree of intellectual rigour. From this angle, one could regard this as a line in the sand. Either you like symphonic black metal in its totality, and therefore will have no trouble digesting even this most extravagant of meals. Or else your love of the style was only ever conditional on various satirical or oblique caveats, none of which you will find here. Vargrav plant a flag on this hill and ask us to either embrace it warts and all or admit that the music offends our sense of intellectual hygiene.