FANATISM – Tro, håp og kjærlighet

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7.0

• Bands:
  FANATISM
• Duration: 00:33:00
• Available from: 12/12/2025
• Label:

• Fysisk Format

There is something stubbornly familiar in “Tro, håp og kjærlighet”, debut album by Norwegian band Fanatisme. Not because the album completely lacks personality, but because the combination on which it is based – raw black metal with clear Darkthronian ancestry on the one hand, gothic/darkwave impulses and a post-punk aesthetic on the other – is a terrain already explored in recent decades. Lifelover, Joyless, An Autumn For Crippled Children and even certain phases of fellow countrymen Beyond Dawn have crossed these same boundaries, often with very distinctive results. Despite this, the Scandinavian group's debut retains its attraction: it doesn't break patterns or inaugurate new visions, but it works, and at times even well.

The merit lies in the direct and non-dispersive writing, which helps to bring out more brilliant melodic lines than expected, even within a deliberately rough framework. The production plays a decisive role: abrasive enough to leave the black metal component and the harshness of the voice intact – an almost always extreme and croaking register – but not so suffocating as to penalize the catchiest parts, which remain perceptible even under the layer of hiss and saturation. It is a fragile balance, but overall functional to the image that Fanatisme seems to want to build.

Many songs prefer rhythmic tempos, a choice that allows influences outside of metal to emerge without forcing; here the group manages to move with a certain naturalness, leaving room for sinuous melodies and a dark, vicious but not heavy atmosphere. The quicker parentheses, when they arrive, nevertheless demonstrate a discreet mastery: “Nordens Eteriske Sommer”, with its jagged progression and a broader progression than the average of the album, is probably the piece in which these different tendencies meet with greater coherence. Some tracks, in fact, seem more refined than others, with a couple of episodes revealing a certain transparency of references which, although understandable in a debut, ends up slightly weakening the whole. “Livet er en Dans p Rosens Torner”, for example, starts out as an all too obvious homage to The Cure between “Wish” and “Disintegration”, only to then darken in the central part: a solution that only partially works, precisely because the echo of the models is still too evident.

“Tro, håp og kjærlighet” still remains a promising first full-length: Fanatisme have already taken a clear direction and seem to possess that minimum of audacity necessary to refine it. Much will depend on how much they are able to make this mix more rounded and personal: if they manage to do so, they could have their say within a still fertile trend.