In the Woods...
Strange in Stereo

This time, writing this review scares me; I've written other reviews before, in some the words flowed out effortlessly, in others the ideas were firmly in my mind but it was damn hard to extract them. Now, however, I find myself in the worst position, not knowing what to say. The album I'm about to review is so varied and complex that I don't know where to start; ideas and visions crowd my head without leaving anything lasting, an ephemeral and impalpable sequence of sensations and images materializes in the mind, only to vanish at the end of the listening, leaving a feeling of restless bliss.

 Responsible for all this are In The Woods..., an extraordinary yet misunderstood Norwegian band formed in 1992 dedicated to refined Avantgarde Metal. It's a pity that the group struggled to establish itself in the market, proof of which is that, in eleven years of activity, the Norwegian combo produced only three albums: the wonderful "Heart Of Ages", the masterpiece "Omnio", and this album, dated 1999, "Strange In Stereo".

Nevertheless, the group's records are certainly not copies of each other; you can sense the band's desire to experiment and try new solutions, if for example in Heart Of Ages there was a wonderful mix of doom, black, and progressive, in Strange in Stereo the group seems determined to shed all possible labels, going even beyond the mere definition of metal.

 The album opens with "Closing", a beautiful song where the singer's suffering and at times effected voice paints dreamy and otherworldly atmospheres, wandering in an empty space where thoughts dissolve, and cerebral activity is reduced to a minimum. You're dragged into this kind of trance until the second track "Cell". Here, the female voice comes into play, you're catapulted back to Earth, to an archaic era, when man was still in symbiosis with nature. It almost seems possible to glimpse a fire and realize that you're in the midst of a ritual, female figures dance around the brazier while the rest of the tribe plays and sings in a guttural language that modern man still conserves in the depths of his primitive brain. The cello, which enters in the next song, draws attention away from this scene, the body seems to lose substance again, and carried by the wind, you rise towards the white moon, the forest below seems to quiver with its own life. From here on, it will be impossible to understand where the Norwegians aim to land, you're transported by the notes into an ethereal world where musical elements taken from psychedelia, doom, and progressive marry in a supernatural and perfect amalgam. The splendid guitar arpeggios and the perfect bass lines command the drums to mark a tempo that is at times fast and frenetic, and at others, slow, measured, and almost anguishing.

The lyrics of the songs are cryptic and difficult to understand, they revolve around the personal experiences of the artists, pain, joy, disappointments, and hopes, all narrated by the talented Jan Kenneth Transeth, who always manages to convey the emotions contained in the tracks.

You arrive exhausted at the final song "By The Banks of Pandemonium", the track proceeds slowly until the final part, where the tones rise and the singer screams, almost as if to awaken the listener, the words "This fable is a damned one - you will damn it, believe..." Then everything calms down, a looping guitar arpeggio accompanied by the bass takes the listener's hand and leads them to the end of this splendid journey.

 A sense of desolation and sadness thus pervades the soul, you're aware, in fact, that the sensations felt are nothing but artifices, they cannot be relived except through listening to Strange In Stereo, a listening that, however, also provokes a deep feeling of anguish and melancholy; in short, you're aware that to return to those shores, a part of your soul will have to suffer. But the temptation will be too strong, one day or another you'll put this album back in the player and press play once again. And the journey will begin anew...

 In conclusion, the album is wonderful, perhaps a bit too long (sixty-three minutes), and I can't help but recommend it to all lovers of good music (rhetorical, right?), and to those who want to expand their musical horizons.