LILJEVARS BRANN‘s Helja Kor will be released on September 27, 2024, via Octopus Rising. Here’s the album review and an exclusive premiere!
This is a scary folk dance with many twists and turns. Afterwards, you feel a little dizzy but you’re certainly not the same.
Is it black metal, folk music, experimental metal? Everything all at once. The title track opens the album, starting with the singer making pained screams like a wounded animal, followed then by sinister riffs and melancholic singing, almost like doom metal but more ballad-like. Then it gets weird again, with the singer speaking in a gravelly voice, then going back to melancholic singing, accompanied by back-up singers, then screaming again (with more back-up). It seems to dance between mood and styles, leaving you unsure what to expect. And it lasts very long, for 10 minutes, to better sweep you in its strange world.
The rest of the album is the same trippy mix of changing moods. To describe individual tracks, “Dansa Mej Brodare I Fyre” has a somewhat more upbeat melody but another melancholic undertone I can’t really describe. The album as a whole is not easy to grasp or describe. Anyways, I like this particular song’s desperate screams backed by an almost catchy melody, and its distorted guitars that sound weirdly rusty and old, as if electric guitars already existed in a distant past. The softer singing in the middle, or maybe it’s a sort of chorus, is also a nice touch.
There’s more of that softer singing in the beginning of “Sjelvind”, which almost feel like a sing-along folk song. That one is overall mellower, with none of the despair and melancholy of the previous tracks. Even the main riff feels nice and melodic. However, the soft singing in the intro of “Krieglande” feels subtly eerie, like a build-up to the strangely gloomy riffs and raspy growls that follow. As the song spins around its 12 minutes, it keeps the same mellow and heavy, sad and mysterious tone.
The last track, “Brannstjerningen” is like all the ideas from the album rolled into one song. It has a nice acoustic guitar melody, followed by electric guitars and drums, contrasted by the loud, anguished screams. Between the ferocious vocals parts are a few scattered moments with the melancholic singing we’ve come know. The instrumentation feels sometimes like a folk ballad and sometimes like a folk dance. Then there’s the title drop, which is sung in a simultaneously sad, hopeful and mysterious manner. Lots of emotion, basically. The main riffs spin around one last time, ending the album in the mysterious and peculiar way it deserves.
It’s the kind of album that takes a while getting used to, but when you do, you’ll love it. While it may feel long and repetitive at times, you won’t really mind because it makes for a better immersion into its unique universe. This is music for a folk horror movie. Or more concretely, something I’d recommend to fans of experimental, vaguely folky, vaguely black metal albums I’ve already reviewed. Simply put, it’s music for feeling mysterious and intense emotions.
And here we go with the exclusive album premiere in full:
Order Helja Kor here: https://www.argonautarecords.com/shop/
Follow LILJEVARS BRANN:
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