Henrik Nordvargr Björkk
The Dead Never Sleep

"UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH
… Gnaorglll… Brrblblbl…
…… Maukh maukh; maukkhhhh…
……… Frzzzfrfrzzz, gnuk.
Miao."

Yes, you heard correctly.
Now, it is not at all easy to convey what "ambient" music precisely is in its darkest sense. Often it is a jumble of noises and effects, a way to manage the most oppressive and/or hermetic sounds to plunge the unfortunate listener into a slow and vast spiral of deep introspection, which in turn can lead to a variety of emotions, ranging from catharsis to terror, nirvana, emptiness, depression, void, circle, clouds, zigzag, death, emptiness, stars, metal, ancestral call, poop, Cthulhu!, emptiness, vapor, void, bah.
I forgot… Boredom.

The latter is, in ambient, an imminent danger, a little demon lurking behind every electronic twist and every single echo stagnating in the air while you, dusty and weary beings, try in vain to comprehend what muuu! lies beyond these oceanic dilations slipping out of your computer speakers like a sepulchral miasma.

Well, sometimes it is not necessary to strive to understand because beyond all this is absolutely nothing.

Nordvargr (or Henrik "Nordvargr" Björkk in full) is a Swede who has worked on several projects concerning ambient, noise, industrial, and extreme metal. In 2005, he presents this album, "I Morti Non Dormono Mai" (The Dead Never Sleep), with a promising yet equally gloomy title. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for what it offers to our ears—and our spirit. From the very first notes... Erm, from the first atmospheric extensions, we immediately notice that the sounds reproduced here entangle and condense like a ball of slime and noxious gases, painting dark, cavernous, and subterranean settings. All very beautiful. At least for the first ten minutes.

And the remaining 35 minutes? Always the same broth, neither more nor less. There are few developments that manage to grab even the slightest attention, and these only add further splashes of morbid unease to the mix, which, however, do not adequately connect to the abyssal atmosphere of the entire album, giving a bothersome sense of lack of cohesion. There's no stellar and titanic evolution dear to Lustmord, there's no nature's growl of Northaunt, there's no black magic of Desiderii Marginis, there's not even that touch of mysticism that illuminates the darkness of (the?) Inade. Here are just bruised, cemetery noises, but excessively prolonged, suitable for creating an atmosphere for a handful of minutes only to then dissolve into their own formula. And in a genre like the darker and more visceral ambient, this is absolutely the main thing to avoid, even before deciding which types of sounds to adopt.

Perhaps the dead never sleep, but rest assured that with this album they will sleep like rocks.