Shining
II: Livets Andhallplats

The discography of Shining is divided into two phases: there are the first two albums, and then there are those that came after.

The first two are milestones, fundamental steps for the development of the so-called "depressive" branch within the black metal extraction area: crude, rancid, disjointed, totally dedicated to evoking negative emotions. From the third chapter onward, a new phase begins where, without losing the peculiar depressive aura that has represented the raison d'être of the Swedish formation since its origins, the music proposed by the band progressively refines itself, emancipating from the dirty and painful compositions of the beginnings, to transform into something more articulated and composite.

What surprises about Shining's discography, however, is the consistency in quality: the entire journey of Niklas "Kvarforth" Olsson, the mastermind of the project and the only stable member amidst various line-up changes, is characterized by the commendable intent to enrich, each time, his "artistic" potential in an evolution that to this day does not seem to record substantial missteps. Then there are those who will prefer Shining's early works and those who will appreciate their subsequent mutations, but one thing remains constant: the respect we can pay to an author who over the years has been capable of not losing his edge in songwriting and daring experimentation. Clowning aside...

“II: Livets Andhallplats” stands between “Within Deep Dark Chambers”, which had shown us a perhaps still immature band, but capable of giving a complete form to always inspired writing, albeit among a thousand inaccuracies and ingenuities (yet its expressive force will remain unmatched), and “III: Angst, Sjalvdestruktivitetens Emissarie”, which will present us with a finally mature band, boasting an incredibly professional approach (the precise, dynamic, and powerful drumming of Hellhammer will make a difference), able to change skins and convey its message without disregarding technique and melody.

The album reviewed here, the second work published in the year 2001, represents for many the formal apex of the band's first artistic phase. On one hand, I continue to prefer its predecessor (I am convinced that in this second work some of the freshness and vigor get lost in the writing and intuitions), on the other hand, it is a fact that the band is here able to make a significant step forward, as in this work the stylistic elements that will characterize the entire genre become more clearly defined, so much as to become the ideal-type, the source of inspiration for many other bands devoted to the same sound.

Kvarforth's artistic vision obviously draws inspiration from the intuitions introduced in the previous decade by a musician like Varg Vikernes, who was certainly not a joyful character, while simultaneously learning from the lessons imparted by fellow countrymen Katatonia. But if we start talking about depressive suicide bla bla bla black metal, it is because the Shining experience places a morbid attention on the themes of self-destruction and suicide. From a purely stylistic point of view, all this translates into music that develops in a horizontal sense, where the syntax of black metal is reshaped until it takes the form of a new musical genre: “II: Livets Andhallplats” does nothing but pick up what was good in the previous album and then clean it from elements that could still be labeled as canonical black metal, regenerating them in a more systematic context, where Kvarforth’s degrading art finds greater awareness and certainly a definition: depressive black metal.

Proof of this is the arpeggio that opens the track “Ett Liv Utan Mening”, soon joined by a muddled four-four beat and Kvarforth’s raspy croak, which will not spare his vocal cords to reach the most disparate registers of despair. The track will soon electrify, but already in these first minutes, it manages to outline the dismay of music that does not fear deceleration, the atmospheric pause, to generate unhealthy and disturbing atmospheres. Certainly, there will be more driven moments (and always the opener will claim the most furious blast beat of the platter in its seven-plus minutes, soon softened in electroacoustic blends that will make the fortune of the band and the entire genre), but it is clear that a conscious calibration of elements into a better-declared formula than before is already in progress: thus consolidating the moderately long composition (the tracks range from seven to ten minutes), dominated by basic and repetitive mid-tempos, where icy riffs of black metal origin are interspersed with desolate acoustic excursions, all overwhelmed by ferocious and at the same time heartrending screaming.

All this can be found, for example, in “Annu Ett Steg Narmare Total Urtfrysning”, monumental and paradigmatic in its ten minutes, enriched by keyboard layers whose chords devoted to the blackest decadence go to pervade a discourse based on forlorn drumming and guitars to the nth degree. In tracks like this or like “Svart (Ur Dagerman's Perspektiv)”, lies the essence of a new genre that manages to capture the tragic and at the same time epic atmospheres proper of black metal, to regenerate them in a context of absolute psychic and existential decay.

Kvarforth’s guitar is the true protagonist of these sessions of the abyss, whereas the drums proceed still in an elementary way (while not despising apt changes of tempo and more fluid passages), the bass is almost non-existent, and the keyboards are relegated to mere decoration, while Kvarforth's screaming, though always suggestive, is not yet a perfectly tuned instrument. But it is precisely this sea of imperfections that decrees the charm of an album that finds its strength in the expressive force of its compositions: in particular, the melodic lines drawn by the guitar, of clear Burzuminian extraction (imposing at times, threadbare at others, but always imaginative) can thrill in many instances, so much so that we could talk about a masterpiece, if it were not for a couple of negligible ambient tracks that detract from the incisiveness of a discourse that finds its strength in the guitar and vocal verve of its deus ex machina.

What is more annoying, however, are those moments when the band cannot avoid crossing into the tacky, as happens in the title track, emblematically called to close the platter: the angry incitements to suicide expressed therein, while always constituting the "ideological" manifesto of the Shining entity and a genre in its formation (which therefore needs to express the message in a declamatory if not didactic form), are in fact the weak point of a product that would have had much to say in terms of ability to create atmospheres and generate clear visions in the listener, but which ends up sounding childish, if not ridiculous, in ostentatiously and even sickeningly displaying a “negative attitude at all costs”, often lapsing into bad taste, if not into simple idiocy.