Svartsyn — In Death
The album In Death was released in 2017 by the Polish label Agonia Records in the form of Jewelcase CD and two vinyl editions- ordinary black and red LP, limited to 100 handnumbered copies. At the time of writing the review, the entire edition of the red LP is already sold out, but the black LP and CD are available for ordering on the site and on the bandcamp page of the label.
The cover of the album is a black and white drawing by the well-known artist Chadwick St John, whose worked with the likes of Arckanum and Horna. On the cover is a zombie-like creature with long gray hair and crossed bony hands. A long tongue twists out from his big grinning fanged mouth. Behind this character is a large number of wriggling black tentacles, or something like that. Above the creature is the band's logo , which combines a distorted gothic script, egyptian motifs and a pentagram in the center. At the bottom of the cover is the title of the album - In Death, written in a distorted gothic font.
The album lasts just under fifty minutes and consists of seven tracks in total. This is very atmospheric, uncompromising, evil and gloomy black metal, without any lyrical inserts or keyboards, with a typical vocals for this genre. As with most BM albums, guitar tremolo predominates here, however I heard a few rhythmic riffs more characteristic for Thrash metal. In the standards set by the Scandinavian BM scene, the guitar tremolo plays a major role and very often this way amazing melodies are played. On the album everything is done according to the canons of the genre, but more on this later. In the tracks there is a rather complex compositionality, almost approaching progressive BM (but not passing this border), respectively, during one track the rhythm changes several times from the average or slow tempo to high-speed blast-bits.
I want to mention the productions very rich sound. It's almost like a wall of sound. Guitars work in the right and left channels. Bass and vocals are given the middle. The drums are recorded in quite a miserable stereo tone.
I’ve now listened to this album several times, because I had one problem when writing this review. The album seemingly had everything to be a masterpiece, but something seemed amiss, and it bothered me. I will try to express their thoughts.
The "wall of sound" technique works only in the first and second compositions. Then, everything turns into a mess. Those same melodies played in the technique of tremolo disappear in the general sound stream, which sometimes begins to border on cacophony. A couple of times it turned out that I realized that something had changed in the composition, focusing only on the drum part, which by the middle of the album began to play the role of the main instrument. The reason for this diffuse wet sound is the bass guitar. It sounds too atmospheric and blurry, so that almost does not play the role that is intended for this instrument. Usually, in black metal, the bass guitar is not part of the rhythm section, but simply supports the guitars. It's the same on this album, but this sound turns into a noisy background, which absorbs guitar tunes and riffs, and sometimes even drums.
This is a strong and angry album, but, with all due respect to the band's leader Ornias, in the discography of Svartsyn there were better albums. Perhaps the wish to make the sound very saturated did not bring the desired result. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to doubt the professionalism and compositional abilities of musicians. Rather, the issue is in it's production .