Svarti Loghin

Drifting Though the Void

ATMF 2010

These depressive post black metallers call Sweden home and Drifting Through the Void is their sophomore album.  The album is adventurous in approach but unified in its emotional theme.  The album opens under austere conditions as windy textures meet a subtly western clean guitar and stark piano on Red Sun Sets.  Kosmisk Tomhet plunges into more piano-synth and fuzzed out guitar accompanied by distant clean vocals, for a mildly uplifting mood crossed with melancholy.  The shrieking black metal vocals cut like a knife as they slash across the soundscape.  Whereas Odelagd Framtid is a more straightforward black metal ode to sorrow, where clean guitars echo against a foggy blanket of riffs, bringing to mind a union of Katatonia and Burzum.  Next the true adventure with Svarti Loghin begins.  The title-track is a western rock journey that summons images of Gin Blossoms if they were less poppy and more country.   This track sticks in my head like a forlorn splinter.  Nightsky Interlude is an ambient thunderstorm of subtle sounds and bursts of menacing noise.  A bit of a surprise is the laidback, dreamy cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan.  At times I think it is a bit out of place and at others I think it is right at home.  The album closes with Stargazer, more black metal riffing with a country and western tinge just lurking beneath the surface.  Treading similar stylistic ground as fellow Swedes Lifelover, Svarti Loghin have wandered off in their own direction, incorporating and fusing sounds and styles into their own morose concoction of post-black metal aesthetics.  Drifting Through the Void is an interesting and unique journey that leaves you feeling tainted with sadness and isolation.