Ildjarn — Ildjarn

Ah, Ildjarn. What an interesting band. A one man band formed in 1991, Ildjarn created most of its work by the mid-nineties in a burst of artistic fury. It remained active until the 2005 release of Ildjarn is Dead, a massive compilation of the band’s material. Ildjarn’s debut album, Ildjarn, limited to just 750 copies on CD, was getting increasingly difficult to find until Season of Mist rereleased it in 2013 with new and improved album art.

Ildjarn’s self-titled, like all of the band’s work, is polarizing, to be sure. It’s one of those albums you’ll be able to tell if you love or hate it almost instantly. It’s a difficult beast to describe. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s quite a simple album, really. The songs are made up of just a couple minimalist riffs, incredibly simplistic drumming, and indecipherable vocals. Throw all of this together, add in mixing and a production value that would make most raw black metal blush, and you have Ildjarn. No, it’s easy to give simple descriptions that describe the album superficially, but it’s impossible to describe what Ildjarn sounds like and fully prepare someone for what they’ll hear.

What a potential listener would imagine after reading a description of Ildjarn would sound like commercial pop music compared to Ildjarn. Whatever ugliness one could imagine pales in comparison to Ildjarn. Whatever Les Légions Noires band you just imagined is about as harsh as what your mother listens to to fall asleep, compared to Ildjarn.

What’s most abrasive about Ildjarn’s debut is not the cutting and simplistic chord progressions. It’s not the tearing, rasped vocals that must have shredded the tape on which they were recorded. It’s not even the absurd levels of distortion used on everything. It’s the drums. They hit with the subtlety of a homeless man on bath salts, clubbing your brains out with a rock while simultaneously screaming and trying to eat your face at the same time. And they almost never stop. Aside from the brief, percussion-less respite, “Blikkets Storhet,” the ever-present drumming will drive you insane. The drumming combined with the obscene distortion on the vocals and guitars, as well as a number of recording errors and abrupt, cut-off song endings, makes for one of the ugliest albums ever created. And you’ll love every second of it.

All of Ildjarn’s albums are quite long, and Ildjarn is no exception. This monster of a release packs in at a whopping 75 minutes and boasts 27 tracks. The songs range from forty seconds to almost five minutes in length. Breaking this release up into smaller, more manageable sections was necessary for the listener’s well-being. It’s a difficult task to listen to this album in one sitting, and listing to it in sessions will preserve your sanity. It’s a challenging listen, but incredibly rewarding as well.

Black metal was meant to be the most abrasive and ugliest thing on the planet, and that’s exactly what Ildjarn does. It’s an incredibly hateful, venomous release, with more passion and energy than most bands’ entire discographies. The cacophonous din on this album remains unmatched in spite even to this day. Ildjarn’s later black metal full-lengths come close, but don’t quite reach the levels that Ildjarn does. It’s one of those absurd albums that succeeds brilliantly despite being so completely terrible, and it deserves a place in your collection.