I
cannot emphasize enough how fucking mad I am about Ildjarn. I guess it’s just
one of those bands you either love or hate. Despite being widely acknowledged
as a seminal entity in the embryonic years of the so-called second wave of
black metal in Norway, counting with the support of eminent personas such as Emperor’s
Insahn and Samoth as session musicians, Ildjarn is frowned upon by many even
amongst the hardcore fans of the scene. The reason for this is that,
notwithstanding the crudeness that characterized the initial age of Norwegian
black metal, it soon became much more sophisticated, with a lot more stress
being laid on technical aspects of the music, insertion of orchestral
arrangements and so on. It’s safe to say that Ildjarn progressed in the
opposite direction, not giving a rat’s arse about sophistication. It remained as
a straightforward, minimalistic, raw, ravenous, unrelentingly rabid act,
safeguarding the umbilical cord uniting black metal and punk, allied with the
more precarious production I’ve ever heard. Compared against Ildjarn, old
school raw black metal bands like Beherit, Blasphemy, Black Witchery, Von or
Archgoat resemble mere choirboys. However, the characteristics of Ildjarn’s
direct, uncompromising approach towards black metal that I’m praising here as
virtues, are dismissed by many as defects. That’s what I meant by saying that
either you love Ildjarn or despise it; there’s no middle term. I’m not implying
that Ildjarn’s music can only be grasped by a (usually self-proclaimed) “elite”
or anything of the sort. In fact, I don’t blame you if you twist your nose is
disgust after a three-minutes “song” with continuous blast beat and comprised
of only one note (yes, one freaking note!), as in the opening track of the full
length Strength and Anger. Don’t get
me wrong: if you don’t like it, I completely get you. I doubt, however, that
you’ll ever understand why I love it. And I’ll be equally unable to explain why
I do.
I
believe I’ve mentioned here before how much I don’t give a fuck about
technicality in my music. Of course, I can appreciate a proper display of good
musicianship, but I simply don’t see it as a sine qua non requirement to make appealing music. There are people
able to compose intense artistic pieces with just a couple of heavily distorted
guitars and a lousy drum kit installed in a damp basement, while not rarely the
results of six expert musicians gathered in a state-of-the-art studio recording
technically intricate black metal just make me yawn.
Ildjarn’s
material can be organized into two different sets (of the prolific Ildjarn’s discography, I’m taking here only the full lengths into consideration): first,
the black metal albums released during the 1990’s (Ildjarn, Forest Poetry, Strenght and Anger); secondly, the
ambient albums (Landscapes, Hardangervidda). I also advise you to
check out their split with Hate Forest, Those
Once Mighty Fallen, released in 2013, which contains several previously
unreleased tracks from both these legendary bands. In reality, I was somewhat
surprised with Ildjarn’s section of the split since, albeit not eschewing the
roughness idiosyncratic to their music, it has a doubtlessly superior
production. When trying to figure out which tracks or albums I should stream
here in The Brainlesser, I beat my head against a wall, for I can’t say I have
a favourite from this band. Even though Hardangervidda
is a rather good album, the black metal trilogy is definitely more deserving of
our attention. May it introduce you into this fabulous classic of 1990’s black
metal.
Ildjarn (1995)
Strength and Anger (1996)
Forest Poetry (1996)
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