Frostscald Records – 2009 – Sweden
Swedish black metal band Skogen’s first album, “Vittra” has many athmospheric elements. There is cold northern wind in the songs. I don’t know why, but I could feel icebergs. They are inspired from the nature while writing songs. There is a influence in both lyrics and pictures. And album cover consists of dead trees, just like athmospheric black metal, and all the black metal bands use this.
In the songs, acoustic guitars are used well, some parts felt like folk black metal. The parts that they used both keyboard and clean guitars make the songs more gloomy. But I didn’t like that songs get harder suddenly, there could be some trans riffs between these parts. Sound and vocals are fitting the athmospheric black metal. Songs are generally instrumental, sometimes they use clean vocals to deepen the athmosphere. And end of the some songs, they used some effects from the nature, wind, rain, burning wood etc. My favourite song is “Skuggoma Kallar”. All songs are in their languages, but you can feel what they talk about.
If you look for cold, gloomy things and things that can make you stroll around the abandoned places, I can suggest you this bringer of north winds album, you won’t regret it.
7,5/10
