The Ghost Album

Wyrd is old news for most ambient-ish black metal fans, so there's no need for introduction other than saying this band has held a very strong and unique stile for quite a few albums. Minimalistic and extreme at times, but melodic and ambiental most of the times. One of the best Sons Of Burzum out there.


But the last two albums have seen a considerable change on the band's style, the previous album stepping in and out of the old minimal black metal style to fall into a more advanced and melodic riff work. But still, it was Wyrd, and nothing else. Now, in this album, this changes continue and develop in the shape of an almost completely new style. This new Wyrd isn't bad, that's for sure, but it does fail to capture that essence of ambient and darkness that made Wyrd especial.


With a very noticeable and new doom-ish influence and with marked rock-inspired riffs, this new style is at times reminicent of early works (mainly songs like Ominous Insomnia) but also at times reminds me of Drudkh's contemporanean Krov u nashykh Krynytsyakh (Blood in Our Wells), because of the mentioned rock vibe most riffs have. There's absolutely no blastbeats to be found here as well, and tremolos are not as abundant as you would expect.

This is a very doomy rockish album, and I didn't expect Wyrd to come up with something like this, even though I should have expected the changes to continue after listening to Rota. It's not a bad album, I like it, but I feel the Wyrd I fell in love with is gone and won't come back any time soon.