The Rock Blogger

Borknagar . Borknagar . 1996. 4 stars.

Yet another brilliant progressive/black metal album from Norway. Borknagar features genre stalwarts Garm (Ulver), Ivar Ivar Bjørnson (Enslaved) and Infernus (Gorgoroth), combining their relentless talents in a cohesive and epic package.

Compositionally, Borknagar consists of raw and aggressive bursts interwoven with majestic folk elements and operatic song structures. Garm’s vocals are superb as always, offering both his blistering howl and clean choral tones to the mix, fleshing out the spiraling blast beats and soaring, distorted guitar riffs. Icy keyboards and acoustic guitars are also used sparingly to add more space to the thundering dynamics.

As noted above, this music has a progressive tinge to it, moving beyond typical black metal fair with extended martial instrumentals like "Tanker Mot Tind (Kvelding)", refined acoustic/electric contrasts like on "Ved Steingard", and the general melodic complexity running through the whole album. I would highly recommended this to Ulver fans and also to those looking for a metal epic that is bold and atmospheric without it wallowing in a contrived, depressive state. This is brutal and beautiful.

P.S. I love the cover, I want to record something in that cabin!

Grimskalle Trell

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.