Sortsind
Sår

With the review on Goregrind, I wanted to joke around, I started writing it for a laugh; today, however, I am about to venture into much darker and scarier territories, which require seriousness and preparation.

Sortsind is not a band for everyone, perhaps not for almost anyone. They played Black metal in the '90s and hailed from cold Scandinavia, but they weren't Norwegian, rather Danish; they lasted only three years, standing as pioneers of DSBM, that is, Depressive black metal with themes related to suicide. Their music and aura become even more unsettling due to the reason for their breakup: in '99, Smerte, the girl who played bass and handled keyboards, actually took her life at just 24 years old: one of those cases where the musical proposition transcends beyond music itself.

Sår was released that year and is a clear manifesto of their fierce and desperate poetics: tracks that are authentic outbursts, with an unrelenting rhythmic section and excruciating screams, worthy of someone about to freeze to death in a snowy desert, alternate with piano or ambient interludes filled with whispers, murmurs, and demonic voices, without ever losing an oppressive, tense atmosphere, as if at any moment a creature of horror could arrive and tear you apart behind your back. However, as the album progresses, a sullen depression also increasingly sets in, marvelously rendered in Jeg er Kulden, a more conventional Depressive track, before the two men of the band resume issuing hisses, growls, retches, for a lo-fi concentrate of distorted and frightening nightmares. Undoubtedly one of the most challenging and arduous Black metal projects to listen to and digest, which truly conveys the idea of being lost in a storm wearing just a cloak while the monsters of the night roam hungry.

Sortsind would only release one more album, More Days, released posthumously, perhaps even more uncompromising and with a cover that is unforgettable in its own way. The darkness thickens, only a black veil remains...

See you next time.