Vordr - III
July 25 2008 at 06:12:43 AM
Sometimes it’s better not to know. Although I can vaguely remember having been recommended them by a friend a few years prior, the only concrete information I could find on Finland’s Vordr was where they were from, that they had formed in 2003, have only three band members and, up till now, had released only two full-length albums (
I &
II). In other words, the essentials. And while nothing on
III warrants anything close to that same description, the album’s 14 tracks – all good, but not great songs - reveal something of the same pattern. It’s all in the music, plain and simple. Which makes this only slightly more interesting given the group’s indebtedness to classic Norwegian Black Metal.
Somewhere between Ildjarn and
Under a Funeral Moon,
III aims for and adequately nails its target of wilderness and extreme isolation. Each track scratched out from a pallid silence that separates one from the other, begun and finished with the same tentative creaks on the guitar while drums and vocals form a coarse duet of hisses, spits and shrieks from within. It was the vocalist, Gand, that sparked this earlier mention of Vordr, and his performance here, an unkindness of raven-like and shrills echoes, does not disappoint.
With a slew of cliché’s like: “Crowns of Snow,” “Forest Witchery,” “Drama of the Clouds” & “Painting The Night Horizon,” Vordr aren’t out to break the mold, but in returning to these same intrigues which have since tired their once formidable influences, have come up with a solid album that manages to outshine the high-profile intemperance of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto’s related audio ‘zine. In short, if it's old tricks you want then there's no use waiting. Vordr’s already bringing the goods.
[Todd DePalma]
.jpg "Jailbait (NSFW)")
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