Much like the Arthur Verocai post, I'm sorry to bump this thread and apologize for being so late. Sometimes things happen and you gotta spend time catching up.
Anyway, right, Vildhjarta. Masstaden Under Vatten.
I've listened to quite a bit of "extreme" metal before. Or music, if you prefer - just because it utilizes harsh vocals and lots of distortion doesn't mean it falls into the category of "metal". Vildhjarta sits firmly in "djent" territory, and I'm not going to argue if that's metal or not, but I will tell you that I'm not a particular fan of djent. It's not that I particularly dislike it, there are times in the past where I've enjoyed it, but I've never really been super into it. Masstaden Under Vatten, from what I can tell, seems to be considered a recent masterpiece entry into the genre, but it hasn't done much to change my mind.
Don't get me wrong, there are definitely parts of this album I like. Included on this album are some of the thickest riffs I've ever heard. Not the heaviest, necessarily, or the most crushing, but some of these riffs filled every single corner of my eardrums while they were playing. Drum patterns vary constantly and are very frequently engaging and heavy and fast without relying on constant double bass pedals and blast beats played as fast as possible. Everyone else seems to be on their A-game, too. But this album, for me, has three significant problems.
Firstly, it only has two modes - crazy complex drumming to drive those incredibly thick riffs and much more "creepy atmospheric" passages that soften things up and just let someone make some noises on an electric guitar (or whatever, I'm sure there's a keyboard or something in here somewhere). There's not much variation between these two and it leads to the album feeling very same-y. I understand that if you spend time taking apart these songs and paying close attention, you'll find that these songs aren't actually repeating riffs and actually are changing things up a lot, but they never change things up in a way that feels significantly different from something they were doing before. As a result, the album all runs together, which leads into my next comment.
It's about twice as long as it needs to be. I'd have a much higher opinion of this album if it had been forty minutes long or less. As it stands, I think it's completely out of ideas and completely out of steam at about the forty minute mark. I don't understand Swedish so perhaps the story they're trying to tell needs an 80 minute long album... but if so, they really needed to rethink how they were going to vary things up. I listened to this album in two sessions and even though I listened to the final third or so a day after listening to the first two thirds, I was still just fatigued. Remember, I was the guy who suggested Rivers of Nihil's Where Owls Know My Name, and this album was selected right as I was listening to a lot of Gorgut's The Erosion of Sanity. I'm not fatigued because of how abrasive this kind of music can be. I'm fatigued by this album because it hits a few high highs early on and then just stays there for an hour and twenty minutes.
Thirdly, and this leans into what I've said above, I don't like the production all that much. I know what I said above about these riffs being really thick and heavy, but when those riffs aren't filling the room, they're hidden behind some really loud drums and a guy screaming. This contributed to the fatigue I felt throughout the album. I don't think it's bad, necessarily, but - once again - I think forty minutes of this would have been so, so, so much better.
...but I'm not sure if even a forty minute version of this would have made me more interested in djent, or even more of this band. It's one of those things I can appreciate when it comes up, but overall I'm not really into this.
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