vote
8.5
- Band:
Gaahls Wyrd - Duration: 00:42:13
- Available since: 06/06/2025
- Label:
-
Season of Mist
Streaming not yet available
Divisive and emblematic character, Kristian Espedal is undoubtedly one of the best known artists of the Norwegian Black Metal scene. If a large part of his notoriety is due to his militancy in the Gorgoroth, his real artistic peaks remain the always too underestimated Trelldom – whose recent return is almost shocking for eclecticity and courage – the Wardruna and his most recent project Gaahls Wyrd, who can perhaps be considered as the compendium of all his previous musical drives.
Cataloging a record like this new “Braiding The Stories” under the term 'black metal' is extremely reductive, if not incorrect, and does not honor the amount of different influences present that embrace the career decades of the singer of Bergen.
After an interlocutory EP such as “Humming Mountain”, returning to debut levels was anything but simple and Gaahl and members do it in the only possible way: evolving without limits, leaving the tracks of a precise genre and then expanding the musical spectrum on styles that even different styles sound conceptually close and consistent.
If the Trelldoms of “… by the Shadows …” had already warned us that there is no room for prejudices and preconceptions in the Espedal house, “Braiding The Stories” continues its ideological path by laying the foundations for a sound that has become increasingly recognizable and unique.
The forty minutes of the album pulsate with a coherent heterogeneity that brings to mind the most beautiful moments of the Norwegian avant -garde such as Manes, Fleurety, Dødheimsgaard and in The Woods, but only as a common thread. In fact, if some flashes of the wonderful trace that gives the disc's name seems to squeeze the eye precisely to the Manes, it then actually takes a road of its own and daughter of an enveloping and delicately prog sound, far from the extreme metal.
Folk progressions intertwine with a simple and touching guitar solo, all supported by the deep and elegant voice of Gaahl, at ease as never before on certain registers; One of the highest moments of their discography with a decadent and sad ending, a perfect mirror of that melancholy that we often associate with Norwegian metal.
The two minutes of the disturbing “Voices in My Head”, between dissonances of contemporary music and a ghostly mood, anticipate the extremisms of “Time and timeless Timeline” the song that would not wait for us, given the premises: imagine the satyricons of the last two works filtered through the sghembe and theatrical visions of the Dødheimsgaard, on a substrate of sounds and sound details Almost subliminal, and you will have a half of idea of what happens.
Half of the album arrives with “and the now” a sort of folk to the Wardruna but lysergic and electric, supported by unusual dissonant arrangements of classic tools. A song with absolutely amazing and mature sound construction.
The production, by Iver Sandøy (Enslaved drummer) is warm, and lives of details sometimes almost imperceptible but precious, perfectly integrated into the sound image of the songs.
“Through the veil” that begins as the closest thing to the real black metal turns out to be, in reality, an interlude that opens to “visions and time”, a sort of folk mantra that wraps on the turns of an unpredictable musical structure, between psychedelic arpeggios, riffs to the ennslaved and more tribal rhythms than rock. It is in this particular song that is revealed as almost all the music of “Braiding The Stories” is arranged around the voice of Gaahl, beautifully produced and arranged, which said, changes and atmosphere.
With “Root the Will” we arrive at the only purely metal song, built on the riffs, with more square structures but with always unusual and dramatic vocal lines and an exciting and night tail; And if for a moment the disc seems almost settling on an area of comfort, the final “flowing starlight” takes care of confusing ideas again: post-rock guitars, low in evidence and almost post punk rhythmics, anticipate seven minutes of disarming beauty, which again remit the cards for what is one of the most beautiful songs from Gaahl's career. Languid and delicate melodies, on a wall of delay and reverberations and an unprecedented drive at the limits of pop-rock anticipate an almost Pinkfloydian ending.
Describing the music of this work is difficult, there are many colors present on the “Braiding The Stories” palette: they make an essential episode of the career of the former Gorgoroth and one of the most successful moments of a certain type of music that, born from a genre like black metal, has maintained the ideological and communicative component, leaving aside the purely structural one in favor of a sound research with classical styles.
The meat on the fire is so great, but arm yourself with time and enter the right form mentis, you will be rewarded.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
