Svarttjern
Towards The Ultimate

Agonia Records 2011

The new album from Norwegian black metallers Svarttjern is rawer, more animalistic than I had been lead to believe.  A deep forest, organic black metal style tumbles out of the speakers as blasting drums and melodic riffs sweep across my eardrums on the album opener, Breathing Soil.  Standard black metal vocals deliver lyrical shrieks as the song progresses.  Bits of thrash surface during the black metal disharmonies of Hellig Jord.  The rumbling mid-tempo pace of the track provides ample breathing room for melodic riffs and shrill accents to arc like lightning across the Nordic sky.  Though more stylistically in line with Immortal, I get a distinct feeling of archetypal Nordic black metal as each song builds upon the previous one.  Though structurally more like the aforementioned Immortal, I feel like there are strong similarities to more recent Gorgoroth albums.  And now that I am reflecting on it, I hear some parallels with the Marduk/Dark Funeral school of Swedish black metal as well.  The blasting riff explosions mixed with midtempo foundations that can be found on a track like Superior Growth exemplify this.  From the outset, Unmasked Violation Of Life is a relentless exercise in speed and merciless black metal.  Traditional black metal melodies add a dimension of structural flow to the song.  This songwriting template is applied to subsequent songs to include Through Madness and Sanity I Am.  Towards the Ultimate falls in line with traditional Norwegian black metal fare and Svarttjern offers a solid though unremarkable album.  It is solid in all respects but in the end lacks anything that truly sets it apart from all its contemporaries.