Min tid skal komme

Fleurety's "Min Tid Skal Komme" is among the best records in the 'post-black metal' style. Released in early 1995, Fleurety were one of the first bands to push black metal in this direction. They retained the harshness and existential terror that was always part of the Norwegian sound, but they turned it inward. This was introspective music; the sound of inner turmoil rather than external threat. The band created a complex and haunting record, one that caresses with one hand and gouges the eyes out with the other.

"Min Tid Skal Komme" was released when the Norwegian black metal scene was gaining (some) wider musical acceptance. Beyond the scene leaders (Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, etc), there was a cabal of underground bands exploring the outer reaches of the genre. This included Arcturus, Ulver, In the Woods…, and Ved Buens Ende. Within a year, a slew of records came out including "Written in Waters", "HEart of the Ages", and "Bergtatt". The musical similarities between these albums is less important than their shared experimental spirit. Fleurety's debut is more extreme and uncomfortable than those others, despite having moments of bliss and calm.

Fleurety cover much ground in 45 minutes. There are only five songs but two of them hit the twelve minute mark. The band are patient, they never rush from one riff to the next without a plan. The distinction between individual songs doesn’t matter much. Each song moves through several phases and moods. The track delineations feel more like arbitrary cut-off points than meaningful changes in direction. This is an album that should be experienced as a whole. It is tempting to loop it from beginning to end and play it through several times. I often find myself doing this.

There are numerous contrasting influences here. Fleurety’s approach to black metal is mid-paced, crunchy, and has a crystalline guitar sound. It reminds me of Satyricon's "Dark Medieval Times" and Burzum's "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss". Fleurety have similar spiteful, harsh vocals to those bands. Svein Egil Hatlevik has taken over the vocals from Alexander Nordgaren, thankfully. There is a clear folk influence; the darkest, most disquieting sort of folk music that drips with dissonance and confrontation. To me, it sounds like obscure avant/prog/folk bands like Conventum, Comus and Pererin. Fleurety also has a lush, comforting side to their music. There are moments where the distorted guitar disappears, the bassist drops some deep notes and the (excellent) female vocals arrive, e.g., "Fragmenter av en Fremtid" or the beginning of "En Skikkelse i Horisonten”. These parts sound like the Cocteau Twins, which is a good thing.

This album is not especially impressive from a technical standpoint. The two permanent members of Fleurety were competent and imaginative, and they enlisted good session musicians (the bass and female vocals are handled by session players). There are none of the weird timings or math-rock tricks of Ved Buens Ende. The easiest comparison is In the Woods… but this record is much better than “HEart of the Ages”. At times, Fleurety’s debut sounds like the precursor to the second In the Woods… album, the peerless "Omnio". Both records share an eccentric song-writing approach that shouldn't work in theory, but always works in practice. “Min Tid Skal Komme” is one of those ‘sleeper’ records that has yet to find its time and audience. As the album title implies, their time shall come.

Fleurety is one of those few bands mentioned in company with the likes of Ved Buens Ende given their rather unique style, both bands play a very dreamy, hypnotic, and ghostly variety of black metal that focused more on forlorn atmosphere and distorted rhythms that go from calm and mesmerizing to jarring and nightmarish while only really landing in the black metal trap of shrieking over blast beats occasionally, usually displaying an agile riffing style more in line with that of prog rock or math rock, and focusing more on creating something winding and unorthodox. Min Tid Skal Komme fills a similar role to Written in Waters, and while it delivers plenty of haunting sounds and mind-bending riffs, it still meanders more than the more focused and hard-hitting Written in Waters. But Min Tid Skal Komme is still the first album I'd mention if anyone wanted more of Ved Buens Ende's bizarre school of black metal and one album just wasn't enough.

Musically, this is much smoother and more relaxed than what most people would expect. Acoustic guitars, pianos, and female vocals are used to lay out a very relaxed mood, and even the harsher parts are slow-burning and very focused on being dreary and dreamy than sending you into spiraling madness, or blasting your balls off with tidal waves of sound. The intensity on this album is less like that of a hurricane and more like that of a nor-easter. It's going to rain a lot and the winds are going to blow hard, but nobody's getting their house knocked down. Min Tid Skal Komme feels serene and dark in the same way that watching a storm from the comfort of your house does. "Fragmenter av en fortid" starts it all off and best exemplifies this album. It's a big song with a lot of variety in its choice of sounds, going from solemn to savage and back again with the utmost smoothness and with many agile and winding riffs. It also uses the acoustic guitar, piano, and female singer to really get a somber vibe going. Every song on this album is a variation on that strange and haunting blueprint and they all shine on their own merits, but they aren't exactly memorable after only a few listens and are pretty easy to get lost in. It's a unique album for sure, and I dig this ghostly, jarring, longing, and sometimes sedate style of black metal. Min Tid Skal Komme is one of those surreal pieces that stands out simply because of how loose and easy Fleurety plays with black metal's typical toolset.

From how much I compared this to Written in Waters by Ved Buens Ende, Fleurety's first album does stand on its own very well. It's one of those albums whose peers are distant and few in number. It's a progressive exercise in black metal's more virtuoso side with a sedate and ghostly feel to it. It's a strange, beautiful album that goes best with low lights and high precipitation. It likes to ramble a lot, and you'll likely forget a fair bit, but its charms will keep bringing you back. If you loved Ved Buens Ende and want more, Min Tid Skal Komme has you covered.

Besides the depressive black metal fad, there are other areas of black metal that have undergone treatment in the sense that they have been moulded around musical influences from other outside factors increasing a sense of avant-gardé that perhaps wasn’t felt as much during the first two waves of black metal. However, here in the third wave, this movement is really beginning to take its toll. Unfortunately, most fans are still blissfully unaware of the possible roots of the genres, or sub-genres that they associate themselves with. For example, the post-rock meets black metal hybrid that has taken the scene and a lot of its fans by storm has only just risen to the heights that it has, despite the fact that it can be traced back to the mid 1990’s when black metal and its following musicians might not have had the same outlets, or means of communication with which to impose their musical talents on - by that I mean the creation of the world wide web, the internet. When the majority of people think of this style, their minds don’t have far to race back to as bands like Altar of Plagues, or Fen are two of the newer acts pioneering the hybrid in the modern era and, it must be said, with a lot of success.

However, this unfamiliar sound isn’t simply a new acquaintance of black metal, but a long time friend, with a strong bond that stretches back many, many years ago when bands like In The Woods…, or this act, the mesmerising Fleurety were spreading their wings and flying over grounds that were previously unseen by many of the leading black metal bands. Acts like Fleurety are important historical figures for more reasons than one can name and are deserving of credit for having a hand in creating one of the leading sub-genres in the black metal scene, a sub-genre that I myself consider to be one of the most inspired fields. This branch of black-metal-meets-post-rock is most certainly beyond any genre definition. It isn’t simply avant-gardé, or experimental. The multi-layered and multi-purpose creation goes by so many different names that this fact in itself should be a big enough indication that people don’t exactly know how to treat the sub-genre, or even begin to understand where it came from. I myself have had some trouble tracing the roots of this area that is often referred to as post-black metal.

Even in the modern era, when the internet is at hand to guide us through, step-by-step, every single process we need to go through in order to trace the lineage of one thing or another, it is useless in the pursuit to find out precisely where and why this sub-genre was given the facelift that it has been given. Considering the ambiguity of the English language, saying something, for example, this sub-genre, is beyond clarification may seem slightly pretentious and, I suppose, given the experimental nature of the instrumentation, it is. One thing is for sure, bands like Fleurety were aiming to deceive the public with a style of black metal that didn’t conform to the traditions in every way possible, but loosely based its themes around them and took elements of other genre, like progressive and rock and fused them together into one unashamedly complicated mixture that takes a lifetime to describe in sufficient enough words. I feel that no review, however good it is, will not do the true innovative nature of records like ‘Min Tid Skal Komme’ the justice that it deserves. So, what makes me write one I hear you ask …

Well, inspiration. Sometimes, something so monumental finds its way into our lives and there is nothing else to do but discuss it - this is the case with Fleurety’s mind-blowing, appetite-wetting record that continually defeats the purpose of the creation of black metal, but in an odd round-a-bout-way, it intensifies it. Forgive me if it seems like I am leading you on a merry dance as I stumble over my words, but listening to, and reviewing this masterpiece is like meeting your idol - I am dumbstruck and slurring my every word as if I were intoxicated of my own choice of poison. To be criminally underrated and a legend within your own right is an odd juxtaposed idea, but that is how Fleurety’s devouring debut should be viewed. To the fans of this supposed post-black metal style, the best bands range from Alcest to Fen and where ever else modern society has made us turn, but the true legends, for once, are found in the obscured olden days where Fleurety have been seemingly left behind. I myself am a hater of those who harp on about “the good old days” and how a particular breed of music was better in the forgotten era than it is in the modern but, for once, I am inclined to agree that challenging bands like Scandinavia’s Fleurety are one of the most integral cogs in the post-black metal scene.

However fast the wheel is turning now, with the influx of many bands over recent times, such an occurrence is only deemed possible because of Fleurety’s impact on the genre as a whole. In essence, bands like this “got the ball rolling”. Although the band have evidently changed in style, leaning more towards the progressive side of their musical conceptions, this fact doesn’t deem records like this any less important. Although musical evolution isn’t a new concept, it is a shame that Fleurety didn’t decide to stick with this dynamic style a little while longer. The band have gotten the balance as aligned as humanly possible. The black metal elements are there for all to see, there is no debate. In today’s society, we’re so concerned with nit-picking and pulling artists up on the most mundane elements of their music. I have been guilty of this also, so I do not rid myself of blame in the issue, but I accept the fact that music is a work in progress, much like life. Only once in a blue moon does a band, or record come along that shatters our entire belief on a well established system (take Ocean Machine’s ‘Biomech’ record - utterly perfect in every single way), but it is always likely that there are going to be imperfections that hamper the progress of a record and usually, within black metal, that comes with production, or the vocals, sometimes the instrumentation.

In regards to Fleurety, this is a band who manage to make their imperfections sound as exhilarating as the perfections, which consume any wrong doing that may appear during the entirety of the record. For the most part, ‘Min Tid Skal Komme’ is a story of juxtaposed ideas, simultaneously played out alongside one another. Examples of this can be found throughout the record, but take a look at the way in which the instrumental song ‘Fragmenter Av Em Fremtid’ portrays its themes in comparison to the next song, ‘Absence’. The former is clean, allowing that lush bass to sweep over us like the wind and the hummed female voice is enchanting like a fantasy based children’s story, with a clean, life altering message that will stick with the child for a lifetime, becoming nostalgic in old age. This portrayal is completely different to the latter song, but just as important. The latter delves deep into the mire of black metal traditions and pulls out all the stops in order to prevent us, the listener, from questioning the black metal elements. That dirty, grimy feel of the atmosphere as the guitar distortion and rasped vocals combine to give the child’s story a more sinister alternate ending.

Like most classic children’s literature seems to do, there are characters and plots within plots that give the story a darker background and bands like Fleurety are masterful at this, posing innocent sounding songs next to aggressive black metal pieces that blow the mind with tremolo bass lines and corrupting symphonies that lay subtly hidden within the distortion of songs like ’Absence’. It isn’t an easy task pin-pointing exactly where Fleurety are at their most brilliant because they’re consistent in their approach. From the perfected production, to the atmospherics and even in terms of the inspired instrumentation, Fleurety know precisely how to put on a show and they do it with exceedingly excellent mannerisms. From incorporating the unexpected sparse clean female vocals alongside the male rasps, to the free roaming bass in songs like the crushing ’Englers Piler Har Ingen Brodd’ that has a sorrowful undertow to its unusual jovial foreground. I suppose, if we’re pressed for an epitome of Fleurety, this would be it.

‘Englers Piler Har Ingen Brodd’ is one of the most exquisite black metal masterpieces I have ever heard - no exaggeration. The way in which the guitarist works his magic, playing up and down the guitar like a mechanical progressive metal musician, tuned in to performing at his utter best all the time, to the bassist, who is dynamic throughout, often leading the way forward for the soundscapes to follow in an intoxicated fashion, as if the bass were the dictator, and the rest the peasants. Fleurety’s black metal days may be gone, but they will never be forgotten - a genuine gem of the metal industry. May you rest in eternal majesty forevermore.