Consuming the Tangible

I started recording music again.

Two months ago the fifth anniversary of me releasing anything went by, and the idea for the closing chapter of my bedroom black metal musical career took a firmer shape in my head. I cautiously took hold of it in two ways: booting up the DAW and a notebook to start mapping out the plan, and listening to a lot of black metal. Primarily Havukruunu, the Finnish purveyors of pagan black metal. I say “pagan” because that’s how every review positions the band, but while I hear and can acknowledge it, I’m surprised more people don’t talk about the huge influx of righteous rock solos and a fierce commitment to bastardizing the pure sound of progenitors like Immortal and Bathory with classic rock and ’80s metal throughout their latest offering Tavastland. It’s those flourishes and the band’s keen sense of arrangements and album sequencing that keeps me coming back to it multiple times a day.

I also use it for sonic suggestions. The drums on “Havukruunu ja Talvenvarjo” sound massive and cavernous, while the bass (thanks to returning member Humö) roars like a beast unshackled. Everything I look for in black metal these days can be found in the epic opener “Kuolematon Laulunhenki.” Switching from a martial 4/4 intro, basically a parade of killer riffs, into a wicked 6/8 gallop (that moment at 2:30 makes me swoon) before guitarist/vocalist Stefa breaks in like a feral wolf. The production is raw but clear; this isn’t so much second wave lo-fi recording techniques as much as it is a band completely aware of their sound and using a studio to bring it to full realization.

The sequencing on Tavastland also ensures the music doesn’t just blur past like a burst of trebly noise. “Kuolematon Laulunhenki” is followed by the more stately and majestic decay of “Yönsynty” before landing us on the rougher waters of “Havukruunu ja Talvenvarjo.” The twin guitar stacking of Stefa and Bootleg-Henkka yield reward after reward, but I keep coming back to that bass sound. Humö’s bass doesn’t always follow the guitar, sometimes playing against the bass with enough of a high-end pick attack to really cut through and add a different dimension than simply providing a low-end foundation for the guitars. There’s a punk vibe invading the title track, and later songs like “Unissakävijä” and “Kun veri sekoittuu lumeen” are filled with enough six-string heroics to bring a tear to my eye.

In the lyric booklet to Tavastland Stefa writes, “Tavastland is written as a memorial for a weird, moody and brooding folk, pagan and vengeful. Sorcerers singing of sorrows of man, wandering the Oxen road of tavastland, from time immemorial.” That may all well be true; when I listen I hear the sound of rock and roll incarnate, filled with all the grit and evil your parents were afraid of back in the day. Great stuff, easily one of the best black metal release for me in recent memory.