Ildjarn - Ildjarn
Review: Like a consciousness asserting itself with the joy of awareness of its own creation, the first release from Ildjarn splashes forth energy in a self-organizing form through riffs which are a codex of motions, textures and silences hiding a vast array of internal symbolism. This meme of subconscious instruction captures the essential motivations and fears of human existence and orchestrates a flight between them toward an expression of essential contentment and growth in being.
So natural is this mood that the music while perceptually jarring, distorted and confrontational remains intuitive to listeners who can exceed their conditioned boundaries of aesthetic. Song structures shift like scenery around a running escapee and the undulation of strumming between instruments forces a surprised grasp as a blast of cold water in the face will make an individual inhale sharply. Micro-riffs made of a few chords and the configuration of their texture and placement dominate this album, merging in groups and emanating essential themes through a selection of simple but insightful views.
Vocals are of the vigilant warrior school of black metal, harsh and barked at a rough cadence to shove forward rhythmic focus. As Burzum once did, Ildjarn invokes dissonance and texture in both vocals and guitars, sometimes bending a monotone into uneasy harmonies or letting a howl unleashed scatter into chaos. Guitars press corrupted chord voicings to move melodies into phrasing like an earthquake under sand. Although drumming originates in a machine and is based on the alternation of two instruments within the drumkit, its construct of consistent rhythm like a heartbeat is a constant reminder of an enduring living being within the experience.
Where conventional black metal aimed for narrative of clearly defined dynamic structure, Ildjarn encodes narrative within consistent arrangement to create a sense of the sublimated, embedded and secretive which matches the language of concept and shaping to each piece. The result instantiated a divergent school of metal in which an ecosystem of details conspire to shape a larger vision.