Ildjarn - Forest Poetry re-release
Review: A desire to set the marginal and dissident career of Ildjarn to rest, this noisier re-release features extra session tracks and alternate takes from an earlier album. While these are great to hear for the Ildjarn historian, their value on a daily listening basis is questionable, as their inclusion lengthens an abrasive listen already composed of 27 micro-songs, all poetic but some in an almost binary capacity, and forces the listener into a drone endurance test.
Ildjarn's power has always been its ability to distill the best of Discharge-style hardcore and Burzum/Darkthrone minimalist black metal into short glimpses of a sensation in riff; it is closer to pure id than black metal, and through a desire to articulate less and construe more through the specific atmosphere of no-production-values songs, the songs of Ildjarn create the sensation of looking over sequential memories of different days on a deathbed.
It is this stillness through unquiet that makes "Forest Poetry" memorable, and while this re-release may go on too long to keep audience suspension of disbelief, it remains a memorable epic of budget riffs and artistry that resembles insights written on fragments of paper scattered through a busy life. The new colored cover and album booklet are welcome additions, although the dragon imagery of the back panel will have many giggling at the absurdity of classic Tolkien-metal aesthetics on such an outsider work of art.