Fredrik Klingwall — Works Of Woe

The poems of Edgar Allen Poe lie at the very foundations of the dark romanticism underlying today’s death metal and neo-classical thematic choices: from his fantasies of voices from beyond the grave through proto-existential considerations on the futility of life to a more tragic introspection on loneliness and failed relationships. So it is with no surprise that Swedish composer and keyboardist Fredrik Klingwall has chosen nine Poe poems as the basis for this short album as he has been confidently straddling both metal and classical styles in his solo work and as part of Anima Morte and Loch Vostok for the past decade.

‘Works of Woe’ has been recorded gradually over this period, resulting in a series of motifs that distil the funeral march or, more often than not, trio for unaccompanied piano. Each piece carries such sombre hallmarks of slow, simple metres always in a minor key, their baroque grandiosities evoking eerie dramas set in dusty, wood-panelled libraries of haunted houses or accompanying a damsel in distress as she’s tied to a railway track by a top-hatted fiend.

Although wholly classical in form, these expertly-rendered, nimble sketches would easily transpose to the now traditional death metal instrumentation of down-tuned guitar, chugging bass and crashing cymbals, strongly reminding of how indebted much heavy metal is to these forms that preceded the blues and rock records that are usually cited as its roots by hundreds of years. In fact, such is the familiarity of this spooked style, one keeps expecting power chords to overcome Klingwall’s lonely piano, mistaking it for a creepy intro to a more pompous rock opera.

While certainly intriguing, when sequenced together as an album each subsequent song’s power diminishes, maybe due to a lack of contrast as the lonely piano persists in its solemnities. However, a prescription of one track a night, ideally while digesting the right poem by candlelight, will ensure the echoes of Poe’s poetry continue to haunt and decay.