Inner Receivings

Brilliant music, although all around us, can sometimes be rather elusive. We, as music lovers spend a significant amount of time searching for those special albums, which are not merely enjoyed but also take strong root in our souls. The difficulty of the search for said music adds far greater worth to the actual discovery of albums, which upon revisitation remind us of the unique emotions we've experienced during specific times in our lives. Sorgeldom's Inner Receivings, I believe, has the potential to become one of those albums for a lot of people. It's a priceless gem that fell into my lap before I even noticed, but dammit, I'm going to cherish it forever.

It's truly fascinating to hear music this uniquely structured. Take either of the two opening tracks, for example. "I Kloaken Lattar VI Ankar" begins very traditionally, but halfway through the listener will feel as if they were immediately teleported to various secluded areas of some mysterious Swedish city. "The Cold Empty Void" is much similar, but its riffs vary slightly, giving off more of a colder, frostbitten feeling. From there, the music becomes considerably softer and more serene, which first awakens and then heightens the listener's emotions, preparing them for the rest of the album.

The production of Inner Receivings is immaculate and consists of many atmospheric subtleties that, although not uncommon in black metal, are rarely delivered as sincerely as this. The album features various tracks that were recorded in sewers, abandoned houses and out in the woods (all of which have been tried before), but each track is carefully blended perfectly together with quality studio production. This is atypical in black metal, given any band's constant struggle to create music that is neither overproduced nor underproduced. What I'm basically trying to say is that the band doesn't limit itself in even the slightest of ways.

Speaking of forgotten gems and no boundaries...did Sorgeldom really just dig up a Slowdive track from one of their unreleased demos and rearrange it to fit perfectly into the middle of the album? Following "Summer Day," comes the album's title track and final "traditional" track of the album. From there, pure emotion and atmosphere carry the listener on a cloud of self-realization to the remaining (and best) songs of Inner Receivings.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very reluctant to write this review. This album has fit itself quite nicely into my constant rotation, and I will undoubtedly have a better understanding of it, say, a month or two from now. However, I am eager for the future fans of this band to buy it and begin listening immediately. Hopefully then will Sorgeldom begin to receive the attention of the metal community at large. As of right now, Inner Receivings stands firmly, boldly and proudly alongside some seriously crushing releases on my "Best Of 2010" list.

Originally written for MetalReview.com

What’s that special ingredient that made black metal the maddening, unholy bastion it was back when Satan reared his ugly head? Was it the bone-crushing heaviness? The blasphemous rhetoric? All that corpse paint? Well, that all depends, but for me, it was the ATMOSPHERE. That tangible way electric guitars, drums, shrieking and (occasionally) keyboard lines come together and evoke a mental, spiritual, and at times physical image of dark, haunted wildernesses in the dead of night. The way albums like “In the Nightside Eclipse”, “Pure Holocaust” and “Dusk…and Her Embrace” fascinated and scared the living hell out of unsuspecting thrashers and death-heads with their atmospheric inky blackness. Nowadays such evocation is practically non-existent, as modern black metal acts instead shoot for brutality for the sake of being brutal with no real sense of natural wonder, which in and of itself leaves a rather iffy taste in the mouth of us old-timers who know what we want with our black metal.

And it’s with that mindset that I took this Sorgeldom to the test to see if they have the chops to bring that old, wicked midnight back to form…

Well, first thing’s first…these guys have a good grasp of the atmospheric. There’s a definitive lushness in the production and performance, with nary a sense of holy sunlight permeating within. Black to a resolute degree, Sorgeldom present a nice, mid-paced funeral march into an ever-thickening mist of darkness, surrounding and attempting to suffocate as best its arrangements and performances can allow. One can detect that disconnecting madness of older Immortal, black-to-Viking-era Bathory, and a little bit of older In the Woods… (with that blackened progressive sound) by way the guitar riffs and percussive nastiness, made a bit easier by the slight lack of vocals and drum blasting, showcasing some grand ideas flittering by with a reckless abandon that’s blackened to the core, heard by the likes of “I Kloaken Lättar Vi Ankar”, “Dårskapens Karneval” and “Summer Day”. Good to hear a newer BM act that seems to know what they’re doing in terms of bringing to light such mentalities.
On the other hand, there’s not a lot of perfection in this cavalcade of metallicism. For as vision-inducing as their wares are, I can’t say that the overall arrangements are in tip-top shape. A few of the riffs and movements are a touch too repetitive to truly enjoy (note to bands of this caliber: repetitiveness is best left to those Burzum-clone suicidal black metal acts, those who want to beat a numbing nihilism into their fan base.) It takes only a few repeats of a particularly epic section to appreciate, and should it start all over again it takes some of that majesty away, making one long for something else to happen. This doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it’s quite noticeable, as in the case of “The Cold Empty Void” and “Inner Receivings”, which garners a bit of fast-forwarding to ensure the listener finds another section that makes for more fanciful listens than that.

In the end Sorgeldom’s “Inner Receivings” has potential in its atmospheric ability, but it’s offset by a few questionable tactics. If they can tone down the repeats and stick with the strengths present they’ll really have something going for themselves.

I first encountered this promising Swedish band on their debut last year, Innerlig Förmörkelse, which consisted of generally lengthy compositions around the 8-11 minute range with alternating scenes of acoustic bliss and raging, melodic black metal drawn up in a not quite polished, but not so raw it hurts fashion. While I enjoyed that album, it didn't really exist outside of a large number of similar acts that use the same shifting between folk values and native aggression, and ultimately would not stand out so far in the memory. This is only a natural progression, though, seeing that Sorgeldom was originally but an acoustic project of one sole member, Jodöden (who today performs both the bass and guitars).

The band have made a number of alterations for the follow-up, Inner Receivings, that slightly shift their formula, without abandoning their more forceful black metal core. For one, they've shed some of the rustic roots of their sound to incorporate a sheen of post-black, or shoegaze elements which often occupy a portion or entirety of the track. They also dabble in some shorter material this time out, though four of the compositions exceed 8 minutes. I found the drummer slightly more intense on this record, and the black metal rhythms far more level, though the feel of unnecessary repetition does again diminish some of the effectiveness, especially in the stretched out fare like "I Kloaken Lättar Vi Ankar" 0r the title track. The central, rasped vocals feel a little monotonous after a time, though they do fit the majority of the album's aesthetic. The band also experiment with some cleans here, though, and feature a guest in AE of Whirling.

I really enjoyed how the album opened, with a meandering mystique of jarring, glinting streams that collided in a means reminiscent of Ved Buens Ende or The Archaic Course via Borknagar, and this immediately brought about high expectations, which more or less persisted through the hour of the total experience. The longer, black metal pieces such as "I Kloaken Lättar Vi Ankar" do not rage on forever, breaking to explore segues of quiet post-rock atmosphere. In the case of "I Väntan På Telefonsamtalet", the majority of the track is not black metal at all, but a longing and desperate instrumental melodic surge of chords that both trouble and delight the ear, until the closing segment where the vocals arrive and catapult us directly into those influences I listed above. There is a cover of shoegaze band Slowdive's "Summer Day" here which is quite affectionate, and combined with the post-acoustic points of "Drömmarnas Galax" or the watery ambiance of the outro "Dyk", one can't help but feeling that this band's real strength lies beyond the metal region.

However, the juxtaposition of its extremes ensures that Inner Receivings will not dull the listener if he's in the proper state of mind to experience it, and the album ends up more intriguing than it's worthy predecessor, with more lasting vibrations emitted through its shimmering departures from the norm. Granted, the black metal gone shoegaze metamorphosis is nothing extremely original, with a wealth of European and American bands visiting the option, but Sorgeldom are fairly strong when they commit to it. Sorgeldom's sophomore is easy to foist upon listeners of Apati, Ved Buens Ende, Alcest, ColdWorld, and other acts that have helped carve out and explore this domain, but be warned that there's still a twisted black serpent sliding about the forests and fields where their imagination blossoms.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

The return of Sorgeldom with their new full-length, entitled ‘Inner Receivings’, has seen a multitude of transformations from within the band. This doesn’t have anything to do with the line-up, but mainly the sound of the band. The debut was very mean-spirited with its use of heavy distortion and wall-of-sound driven atmospherics, but this sophomore, which can be summed up by songs like the instrumental ‘Vintern Var Hård’ alone, is a lot lighter and more focused on instrumentation and song writing that the pulverising atmosphere that soon became the main ploy of ‘Innerlig Förmörkelse’. With two of the three members now working with an additional band, Whirling, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me that this album is somewhat like the new Whirling material. Bar the vocal displays of Dr. Sunden, who is the only member of this band not to take part in Whirling’s new album, the material takes on a cleaner edge to it with a focus on mesmerising guitars and backing bass lines.

‘Innerlig Förmörkelse’ was quite experimental in itself, too. It had lots of buried experimentation occurring beneath the fuzz and decay of the production. Whilst the production job did give it an archaic feel, the instrumentation beneath it was explorative. The production, on this occasion, has laid off of the heavy factor. The distortion is controlled, the atmospherics are controlled and every element feels much more focused than it did before. Songs like ‘Dårskapens Karneval’ are great examples. They really do transcend black metal with its use of cleanly layered guitars and even clean male vocals surprising popping up along the way. The Slowdive cover of ‘Summer Day’ is particularly important because, although the debut had a certain vibe to it that suggested there was a post-rock/shoegaze feel to the material, this is surely now confirmed by the band with this mesmerising cover being included onto the disc.

The song would normally feel unnecessary given Sorgeldom’s older style of implementing a harsh production over sweeping instrumentation, but that has been resolved now and the production is cleaner, tighter and it tends to flow more fluidly than before, though I still love the chaotic distortion it brings to the foreground on the debut. The song writing is more focused, as I said, which is precisely why a cover of this nature doesn’t seem out-of-place on such an album. The fierce intensity of the debut has relinquished its firm grip of the newer style, which feels more accomplished. The addition of clean vocals, which harmonise the atmosphere on the previous song, as well as using them alongside the layered guitars, gives this cover a perfected setting and environment to implement its dreamy, hazy vibes. Although Sorgeldom do resume normality on the title track, there is still a lot of experimentation occurring which allows more in the way of cleaner instrumentation to flow more productively and never making it seem out of its depth.

The title track is a good example of how Sorgeldom like to shift the balance between clean and harsher styles in quick succession. The song uses a progressionist type of bass beneath the guitars and sweet sounding guitars before bringing back a nostalgic view with the rasping vocals of Dr. Sunden and the repetitious, tremolo based material and blast beats. However, once again, this type of instrumentation is soon accompanied by cleaner stylistic approaches, particularly from the vocals which sound sterner during the faster tempos than they do during the slower to mid paced tempo of clean parts. There have been suggestions that the instrumentation is beginning to, on both Whirling and Sorgeldom’s new albums, fuse a heavy Ved Buens Ende influence into the music, which seems more so true here than it does for Whirling, who have ties to cleaner, occult rock styled bands like Lik and Lönndom. This theme of rock-orientated music, with a deeply brooding atmosphere, is covered particularly well in the introduction to ‘I Väntan På Telefonsamtalet’ with the rhythmic drumming and psychedelic guitars.

This style of mixing black metal with cleaner passages of instrumentation and cleanly sung vocals isn’t new. A lot of bands seem to be adopting this style of late, like Svarti Loghin, whose new album, ‘Drifting Through The Void’, utilises influences from country, to progressive rock of the 60’s. There is a psychedelic feel to bands like this, as shown in the title track on this album. The vocals play a huge part in drawing all the influences together and they do a good job at this, showing a more experimental side than they previously had on the debut. The newer style isn’t always as sweet natured, as songs like ‘Drömmarnas Galax’ do take on a darker side to them with the distant, haunting vocals and the tremolo based style, though the atmosphere is very muted and not quite as in-your-face as the debut. This song takes on a shoegazing style that the Slowdive song covered with perhaps more depth and quality. In conclusion, this doesn’t feel as powerful as the debut, given the winding down of the distortion and the focus on more reflective instrumentation. The album starts slowly, but gradually builds into a fierce force.