Intet liv

After hearing Sykdom's amazing "Mjollnir" album, I decided to look for their previous effort, "Intet Liv" to see if it was on the same level as the sophomore album. This album definitely has some of the same undertones, but the two albums are not completely interchangeable.

The start of "Intet Liv" has a very cool, ambient, medieval sounding introduction. The drums for the introduction piece are done very well, and add a nice dimension to the intro (think a slower "Silvester Anfang" from "Mediolanum Capta Est"). Once the introduction is over, the listener finds this album to be a different beast altogether. The music blasts forth with some really inventive drum lines and typical tremolo picked guitars. The vocals, well, I think they could be done a little better. They remind me of what a hardcore singer would sound like if he tried to black metal.

One of the similarities between the two albums are the amazing guitar lines. They are definitely a step above what most black metal bands are doing now-a-days. The fingering and chord structures are really well done. They even throw in some acoustic guitars occasionally, for some token introductions. There's a really solo in "Jeg er Bare en Mann, Part I", that almost sounds influenced by seventies prog-rock (gasp: that's not very 'kvlt'), but it works so well for this song. They have a good mix with the guitar lines. It doesn't get stale throughout the album. There's a cool thrash styled riff in "Monotony, Part II" that works really well.

Sykdom is excellent at making atmosphere, as is evidenced on their sophomore work, but the atmosphere on "Intet Liv" seems forced in many places. They use the cheesy synths every once in a while. I believe that the music a band creates should have atmosphere on its on right, instead of writing sub par music with cheesy synth lines to make the music seem more atmospheric and "eerie". Well, after saying that, let me say that the music on this release is not sub par, it's very well written and very well played, but the occasional synths take away from the raw feeling the rest of the music permeates.

Speaking of forcing atmosphere into music, I believe nothing can top a classical piano to add a natural element into a song. Well, "Jeg er Bare en Mann, Part II" is a well played, well written interlude, with a really cool piano line, which is ruined in some places by the cheesy synth overtones. It's still a good piece.

The vocals really seem to kill the music. If second rate vocals are your thing, maybe this is for you. I think the reason this style of vocals worked so well on the second album was because they were used less. The songs were a bit lengthier allowing the music to take the stage and not the vocals. There are some places on "Intet Liv" where the vocals work really well; at one point there is a really cool clean vocal part that is almost a chant. Very cool! Too bad they didn't do it more often on this album. Although the chant was really good, the place where the vocals work best is when they're not being used.

By far my favorite track on the album is “Winter Journey”. It seems to be the closest to the style the band played on “Mjollnir”. The song has this amazing feeling and atmosphere to it. The guitars are very epic, the drums are punishing, and the vocals don’t sound like a high pitched cookie monster. Wow, too bad they couldn’t play like this on the rest of the album. The band plays such an amazing song, without synthesizers and forced atmosphere, and what happens? There is more of an atmosphere! This song just has the epic feel of a long journey like their second album. Well done!

So what we have here is a debut album that doesn’t match the sophomore effort (eat that you retroists). There is so much potential in this album, and thankfully the band capitalized on the good point and not the bad for the second album. Although this album is really good, and I do recommend it all black metal fans, it’s just not as good as what I was expecting. Maybe my hopes were too high, I don’t know, it’s good, it just doesn’t do it for me like “Mjollnir” did. This album is recommended to black metal fans, because it’s good, but I would suggest checking out “Mjollnir” first.