Vardan - Between the Fog and Shadows [2015]

It would have been a high supposition at any rate to expect Italian one man suicidal black metal hermit Vardan to cast aside the cumbersome simplicity and rawness of his album ''Winter Woods'' and the dozen records which precede it and break mold with his 6th album for the year, ''Between the Fog and Shadows'', since the man has not only failed to mature in his taste for cover art but also to artistically develop and improve upon the quality of the music on way of another, let alone cast a wider net of influences to garner sounds from. Vardan's creative repertoire is quite frankly depleted at this point, but somehow he can still come up with songs of 10+ length by downsizing what the works of Burzum or fellow countrymen Forgotten Tomb into a recalcitrant amalgamation begetting nothing but doom and desolation. My only theory at this point is that he's bulk buying from some low-income producer of depressive bedroom black metal - who, by the way, might currently be strumming the strings of his next bleak piece - and then presenting them in seemingly remote packages for the maximum amount of profit. If not that, the man is working his ass off every hour of the day, crafting these dreary, sleepwalking bevies of desolation and wintry silence, and it's a real shame that the amount of work he's culminated hardly accrues into quality writing, on a par with other prolific modern black metal musicians like Jute Gyte. Quality over quantity, right?

The pastiche is the same; the musical equivalent of being strapped on a crucifix and slowly gliding through an icy fjord by midnight, with owls creaking in their groves and the forest leaves rustling silently behind. This is the kind of immersive experience already channeled by the likes of Midnight Odyssey, but Vardan are far too down-to-earth and never take the aesthetic to its cosmic and astronomical, mesmerizing flights as some other bands do, with raw and perturbed production standards capturing most of that early 90's Burzum/Darkthrone tone. Simplistic riffs in the river of convergence here. There is not even a hugely chord-based, Scandinavian trope to be found, since I found ''Between the Fog and Shadows'' to be even more dolorous than its predecessor, and instead there are loads of stringy open chords and flimsy, distorted arpeggios all over the place: the result is not a mess of whirlwind of intensity, but a pale wave of desolation and distress like ripples in the water. There are moments where Vardan will splash some damp gloss on the sway of the guitars with these odd, slightly inaudible synthesizers that remind me of the ambient mastery of Forest Silence, a Hungarian black metal outlet extraordinaire, but as much as I enjoyed the momentary aural realizations of the synthesizers, they're much too buried in the mix and the frankly poor levels of production to have any sheen. To wit, the songs feel outrageously long at times, and rightfully so, since by cutting down to 3 tracks Vardan is presenting us with songs of 11, 15 and 18 minutes in length, respectively, each another frigid exercise in blatant chord strumming and almost apologetic depression ad nauseam, with few breathing holes existing within their immersive bodies for the listener to take a moment from the monotony.

This seems like some pretty hateful flak here, but in fact there are some fairly 'enjoyable' sequences to be found within the album. ''Solitary Death of a Forest Spirit'' is easily the best among the triplet, with dissonant and angry chord sequences ousting the slower, black/doom moments and a rather excellent, rainy array of ambient synths working their way through the middle of the song, and during one of those rare instances Vardan truly captures the monotonous, dreary bulwark of emotion it needs to synthesize to its entirety. The riffs, limited in their natural disposition of favoring recurring waves rather than slews of unhinged creativity, are nonetheless not too bad, but I don't feel too good for them either. Vardan's vocals, once more, while the possible game changer, become stunted and lethargic as the record passes on, and with all the records pacing in linear currents and motives, vocal duties hardly retain a symbiotic relationship with the other instruments, merely propagating these harsh, unruly, echoing ululations and howls that are quite cold and haunting in their own respect, but fall short of excellent in the long-run. Unfortunately, while all the instruments never dip below the level of 'average', the drums are quite fucking painful. I'm not know to be a complainer of drums as much as I chastise guitars and riff-craft, but even the silent reviewer has to despair the awful stampede of the open hi-hat and the unnecessary loudness of the drums in general. This is a bedroom black metal record, and the drums should traditionally be embedded deep in the mix, way behind the guitars and vocals, but here they're constantly to the fore, without even producing anything besides simple beats. As Fenriz says the drums are only supposed ''to... be there'' - and thus on this one point I will be unabashedly cancel my charitableness. Fuck you, drums.

Beside that little mishap, ''Between the Fog and Shadows'' is not a bad record, and that mournful sameness it breeds would help you with sleep if one day you're in the mood for slashing your wrists open and there aren't any knives to be found in your house. Anti-depressants that come with corpse paint. But heck, we've already been through this, and if you've somehow traced this review from whatever obscure source you found it in, you're probably pretty well-versed in black metal yourself, and know that groups like Burzum, Bethlehem, Forgotten Tomb, Sombres Forets or Austere have long emerged as apostles of this somber, wintry sub-genre, so your chances are probably stronger with them.

Highlights:
Solitary Death of a Forest Spirit

Rating: 55%

Vardan - Winter Woods [2015]

I've yet to delve into Vardan's tremendous backlog of releases, averaging 3-4 records a year in the last few years, but immediately becomes clear that the man's productivity is no moot point. With so many records already under his belt and a few extra projects like Nostalgic Darkness running smoothly, the man aspires to be the Italian black metal equivalent of one Rogga Johansson, with his own immersive logjam of calculated Swedish death metal carnality. Just about six months into the year, and there are already five albums to his name, each, no doubt, like the one at hand, haunting exercises in rabid, scathing cold and wintry despondency. Of course, haters are gonna hate, and the whole bedroom black metal mentality has over the years acquired such an edge that most bands have seamlessly dissevered themselves from the outside world for the sake of recording in their own forsaken basements and whatnot, usually with mixed results: it can decidedly be hard to adapt any stringent attitude towards the trend, because my one half screams hallelujah at the advent of bands like Darkthrone and Leviathan while the other half yearns to pull out all the hairs on the top of my head in dismay that so many modern black metal have ended up as broken eggs while going for bedroom black metal omelette...

Thankfully, ''Winter Woods'' veers more towards the former camp. If you're familiar at all with your Burzum, Darkthrone or Forgotten Throne, you know what this sounds like, harrowing waves of mourn and broken lines of cruel, frozen melody piercing your eardrums with unruly monotony. Vardan IS a riffs man, with some cool Transilvanian Hunger-esque tremolos cascading with spiking anguish, but the range of riffs on the album are admittedly not too varied: we're definitely not talking about something on par with ''In the Nightside Eclipse'' here. With the rustic/seasonal cover art and the initiation of the opener, ''Winter Woods Pt. 1'', it's certainly not difficult for the listener to have at least some idea of the underlying contents of this disc, that is rustic and depressive black metal solaces being funneled down your ears, yet Vardan somehow manages to capture a few instances of true grief and captivating dolor without sounding too repetitive. The pace certainly me reminds me of their more well-known and notoriously suicidal countrymen Forgotten Tomb at their peak, circa 2002-2004, since Vardan never altogether rushes into gaits of unbridled Norwegian ferocity, like, say Carpathian Forest of 1349. To add, the sense of longing here is magnified by the high proportion of doom-y entanglements and slower moments, bleak sequences of linear clean guitars where that resonant despair of Vardan simply enclosing himself in a toilet and slashing open his wrists while seated in the bathtub becomes all the more vivid. Certainly, I could cite 2-3 instances here where the unfolding of the fuzzed electric guitars after a prelude of cleans eloped me almost entirely with sheer pang and melodious regret, like on ''Cold Night of My Soul'', and indeed those are the best moments in the album.

But let's not entirely be deluded. This obviously isn't the next best Leviathan record, and maintains a startling simplicity. There are moments where ''Winter Woods'' doesn't feel like a far cry from the Hungarian mavens Forest Silence with their lurching, despondent atmospheres, though Vardan at once feel grittier and less bombastic. For one, I wouldn't have minded some ambient effect, because for the most part Vardan's 'eerie' clean guitar sequences drone with too discolored a sound. And this surely isn't the easiest pill to swallow if you're ears aren't trained for the gritty and the ghastly. I also have little appreciation for the drums, which are hardly professional. Granted drums aren't too significant in black metal, but Vardan never lowers their volume too much, and the constant open hi-hat abuse occasionally pangs the consistency of the recurring tremolos and dense ambiance. That said, I can say I've enjoyed Vardan's vocals enough to make 2-3 spins worthwhile, as he howls like a haunted cacodaemon in the shivering cold of the night, echoing with dismay. For sure, Vardan could ramp up his proficiency in the riff department: considering all his other albums follow a similar path to ''Winter Woods'' he must be running short on riff-supplies, and the ones existing here aren't the most inventive ones either, especially with artists like Jute Gyte who can put the grit and creativity of most other black metal musicians to shame. Rawness is key here. Blunt winter tapestry for minimal absorption, with guaranteed lacerated wrists if overdosed. Not the best black metal I've heard recently, but sufficiently engulfing if your tastes lie in Burzum, Darkthrone, Forgotten Tomb, Ulver, or the like.


Highlights:
Cold Night of My Soul
Uroborous Black Circle

Rating: 65%