Wyrd
Kammen

Continuing to go overboard, the Wyrd duo presents us with the seventh album in 6 years (not counting splits, EPs, and demos). The primal genre they played only 6 years ago has monstrously evolved, contaminating and transforming through a black metal increasingly dedicated to nature themes, which inevitably becomes more acoustic, closer to folk.
BUT BEWARE! This CD is neither old nor new, it’s just another way of playing something that would get boring after 2 songs! The hardest choice is to perpetuate over the years by choosing not to modify the foundations. Wyrd does it: yet another album of icy autumns and winters, of folk tales…

Contradictory and fascinating, "Kammen" does not spare us moments of black/death/doom/folk/pagan/metal, leaving not very different sensations from track to track, demonstrating that there is no genre to describe an emotion, but it is people who know how to convey them. Starting from a use of keyboards reduced almost to absence (a real novelty), Nargath enriches the melodic parts with electric guitar solos less messy than usual, clean vocals off-key as usual, and the real protagonist of the album: acoustic guitar. The drums are finally played with more discernment (and indeed it’s not him, but JL Nokturnal). It’s not that it’s anything brainy, but the rhythmic performance at some points is excellent.

The start, "The Hounds Of The Falls", is a distorted bass riff followed only later by guitar and growl. The impression is of listening to something more akin to death metal than black, in fact, there is no trace of scream throughout the album. Almost the entire first half of the track has this pagan/death nature while the second is decidedly more melodic and acoustic, showing us what the general musical lines that will characterize the entire album will be: a continuous alternation of extreme metal and folk. "Cold In The Earth", which is not very special, is played and sung with vigor and does not spare passages of guitar technique of no indifferent quality. Instead, "October", with more epic and acoustic tones, is a long autumnal hymn that aims to emphasize both the dying side and the strong colors it offers us. There is room for lyrics of loneliness and depression: "These Empty Rooms" begins to taste much more like Katatonia’s rock-era riffs, which will be confirmed at the end of the CD, with the excellent cover of "I Break", redone in a decidedly personal manner.
The title track, the gem of the CD, is sublime and sensual like the cool breeze that in summer allows you to breathe for those few seconds it blows. Here, however, Nargath indulges in some of his least in-tune vocalizations, and the most surprising thing is how well he manages to make them fit in the musical context. The sixth is "The Last Time", which still does not hide anguish and sadness in the lyrics, surrounding it with bittersweet riffs still inspired by Katatonia (but not in arpeggios). The acoustic outro of "The Hounds Of The Falls" opens for the splendid "Rajalla", almost 18 minutes of dreamy and progressively dropwise-dosed music. A journey of winter cold in tundra forests that reeks of death and solitude, like the arpeggios and long pieces dedicated to the crystalline acoustic guitar. We are not at the levels of "Season Of Grief", which will always remain unmatched, but simply another of the most beautiful pieces that Tomi Kalliola has ever written, without exaggerating…

"Soulburn" again uses more death riffs than anything else and violently closes together with "I Break" another surprising album by Wyrd. Experimentation, tradition, instinct, class, HUMILITY, this work lacks very little, and with a beautiful booklet on display, it truly deserves maximum attention from those who want to broaden their listening without getting smeared by electronic abuses.