Artwork by Chris Williams

Style: Thall, Djent, Progressive Metal (mixed vocals, mostly harsh)
Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Frontierer, Humanity’s Last Breath, Car Bomb
Country: Sweden
Release date: 30 May 2025

Metal suffers from an unfortunate theme where genre pioneers eventually fall prey to the very scenes they helped create, buckling under the weight of their own stagnating influence. Look no further than Morbid Angel’s Illud Divinum Insanus, Dream Theater’s The Astonishing, or Metallica’s Lulu or St. Anger. Metal seems to carry with it a curse of longevity for such foundational acts; surviving long enough nearly ensures an artist will produce one of their pioneered genre’s worst releases to go along with whatever classics they may have created in the past. 

Vildhjarta are one such foundational act, single-handedly pioneering the sound of thall, an offshoot style of djent. Even today, there are arguments about whether or not thall should be classified as a genre proper, but whatever side of the argument one falls on, there is an undeniable and clearly defined difference between the two sounds. Thall started as an in-joke between Vildhjarta members in 2009—a mispronunciation of “Thrall” (a World of Warcraft character)—following the viral success of their Omnislash demo within the then burgeoning djent scene, using it as a descriptor for their music but keeping silent about the term’s meaning. Other groups picked up on the new terminology, using it to describe their own sound as well, even if that sound was nowhere near Vildhjarta’s particular style. Thall was essentially memed into existence, coming to a head in 2011 with Uneven Structure featuring a thall sticker on one of their guitars in the music video for “Awaken”; Vildhjarta would also release their debut LP Måsstaden, clearly defining the sound for the first time, officially partitioning it off from djent. 

Since then, thall has grown into its own scene, with bands such as Frostbitt, Mirar, Indistinct, FRACTALIZE, and Allt exploring the sound’s limits and applications. Vildhjarta themselves would once again further thall’s horizons in 2013 with the release of their Thousands of Evils EP. At this point, thall had achieved a clear distinction from djent: gratuitous bends, pitch-shifted leads, wide interval jumps, a post-metal-inspired focus on ambience, an even more stilted rhythmic conceit, and a slowly evolving tonal language all its own. Vildhjarta would fall silent for eight more years before releasing their 2021 follow-up to Måsstaden—Måsstaden Under Vatten—signaling thall’s largest evolution in sound since 2013. Now in 2025, we are subject to + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, raising the question: Was Måsstaden Under Vatten a portent of continuing inspired evolution, or will Vildhjarta fall prey to metal’s ever-looming curse of longevity?

+ Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is, in some ways, a continuation of the sound explored on Måsstaden Under Vatten, which saw Vildhjarta take a step back from their more traditionally structured phrases and riff patterns, replacing their dense riff focus with a sparse, somber, and patient approach to songwriting. The songs were noticeably slower, with a reaffirmed focus on building a darker atmosphere and tension through synth textures and background guitar harmonies. + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + continues the focus on atmosphere, utilizing the same techniques as before, but ramping the riff density back up past even Måsstaden’s levels while maintaining the somber, meandering songwriting approach.

The marriage of labyrinthine riff passages and patient atmosphere feels like Vildhjarta’s most complete sound yet, but the more I listen to + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, the more I realize that this sound has also been forcibly repurposed as a contextual backdrop for them to fervently explore a budding new tonal language. Short staccato rhythmic bursts, off-kilter legato scale runs, and huge nauseating interval jumps remain Vildhjarta’s primary riffing style, though with a realigned focus on evolving their—and therefore thall’s—unique melodic sensibilities. The long legato lines halfway through “+ Sargasso +” are where the cracks in the tonal foundation first start to show, with odd, seemingly “wrong” note choices slipping their way into the melody. Right afterward, “+ Ylva +” blows the sound wide open, with the back half especially braving previously unexplored tonal territory within thall. The riff starting around two and a half minutes in is less of a riff and more of a schizophrenic inner dialogue, the cadence of which feels not quite call and response, but vaguely conversational. A hazy backing guitar harmony wraps itself around the entire second half of the track, adding to the feverishness, the entire section marking the first true declaration of significant evolution within the genre in years. 

While before, Vildhjarta’s sense of melody seemed to emerge from a rhythmic foundation, this time around it feels like the rhythms are blooming from a tonal center, acting primarily as a jagged vessel for the off-kilter melody to nestle within. The ramped-up syncopation feels intrinsic and primordial, necessitated by nascent tonality instead of the deliberate desideratum of a style. Vildhjarta have successfully shifted their core direction from a post-Meshuggah rhythmic ideology to a fully realized evolution of the somber, brooding melancholy that was germinating onMåsstaden Under Vatten. Guitarist Calle Thomer has crafted a unique melodic language all his own, mixing expansive open intervals with dense pulsing chromaticism that often has seemingly little to nothing to do with the accompanying atmospheric harmony. Riffs not only completely ignore the tonic, but drag it down into the bubbling tar pit from which they seemingly emerged. Backing guitar and synth provide what context they can, but the lead guitar will often be on another planet entirely, having a conversation with itself, compartmentalizing whatever grotesqueries it had beheld while stargazing from its cosmic perch. 

There has always been a fragmentation between Vildhjarta’s riff-craft and their surrounding performances, but it’s taken to further extremes on + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, leading even to pockets of polyphony within some of the busier phrases. Take the opening riff of “+ röda läppar, söta äpplen +”, which sounds as if one had just woken up and was hearing a muffled conversation from the other side of a door. The interstitial melody that weaves between the traditional djent chugs mimics the tonality and cadence of hushed discord, as if there were secrets lurking just beneath the auditory surface. Cascading approximations of a broken arpeggio follow shortly after, straying even further from any sense of diatonic comfort. 

Thomer’s guitar-wizardry is certainly the centerpiece of + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, but this doesn’t mean the other performances are anything to sneer at. Frontman Vilhelm Bladin’s ever-improving vocal performance continues to provide texture, acting as an anchor point for the cacophonous instrumentals. His clean singing in particular is more emotive than ever (“Där mossan möter havet,” “Kristallfågel,” “Viktlös & evig”), adding yet another layer of melodicism for the riffs to sink their consonance-decaying claws into. Drummer Buster Odeholm’s performance is phenomenal; he has a striking ability to toe the line between insidious groove and near-arbitrary syncopation, unifying the two extremes in distinct manner. My favorite example of Odeholm’s particular style begins about a minute and a half into “+Sargasso +”: A constant eighth note hi-hat keeps tempo while shifting crash cymbals swell alongside the kick drum, which follows the guitar’s intense syncopation. As the phrase continues, it threatens to fall apart completely as the pattern becomes more and more intricate with Odeholm adding his own ornamentation on top of it all, before finally collapsing into a breathing, pulsing synth break as the song passes the two-minute mark.

Vildhjarta slowly and consistently poke and prod at the corners of thall’s melodic language over the runtime of + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, culminating in closing track “+ den spanska känslan +”, which climaxes around two-thirds of the way through with a phrase that fully lifts the veil off the previously gestural polyphony, opting to embrace it outright. A patiently funereal harmonized acoustic guitar line is introduced, only to be unceremoniously interrupted by a massive truck of a riff that completely ignores any mournful pretenses set up just moments beforehand. The acoustic line trudges on behind the mammoth tone of Thomer’s distortion, the most undiluted proclamation of Vildhjarta’s marriage between somber ambience, surreal tonality, and idiosyncratic rhythmic ideology to date. Moments like the above are eminently memorable but, as a whole, + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is less about the big standout moments than previous releases. The main focus this time around is on creating an alienating atmosphere through vague tonality, an atmosphere that ends up being antagonistic to genre newbies and veterans alike, perhaps not intentionally but as a result of its sheer otherness. 

+ Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is—much like its cover art—rigorously technical and feverishly psychedelic, traits that are caught in a war of attrition, proliferating each other through constant battle-metamorphosis. These traits, along with every other trait mentioned thus far, form a howling constellation of stars that are connected through Vildhjarta’s paradoxical stylistic throughline of tonality by way of consistent dis-melodicism. Stare long enough into the night sky, and this constellation spirals into a whorling vortex, spilling forth hallucinatory aural terror from an eerie unknown. Indeed, Vildhjarta have convincingly eluded metal’s persistent curse of longevity, once again taking a leaping stride of innovation, dragging the entirety of thall behind them.

Recommended tracks: + Två vackra svanar +, + Sargasso +, + Den spanska känslan +
You may also like: Frostbitt, Mirar, Reflections, Uneven Structure
Final verdict: 10/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Century Media Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Vildhjarta is:
– Vilhelm Bladin (vocals)
– Calle Thomer (guitars, bass)
– Buster Odeholm (drums, bass)

The post Review: Vildhjarta – + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: prog black metal, symphonic black metal, opera (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Imperial Triumphant, Fleshgod Apocalypse, 1914, Myrkur, Diablo Swing Orchestra
Country: New York, United States
Release date: 19 April 2024

Lots of music seeks to elicit pleasure and so do Folterkammer (“torture chamber” in German). Naturally, metal seeks to beat you down sonically, but Folterkammer are your mistress who employs a whip for this purpose (“Das Peitschengedicht”) while you forcefully lick her (…ass, as I believe “Leck Mich!” is a direct reference to the Mozart piece) and kiss her feet (“Leck Mich!” and “Küss mir die Füsse!”). Just look at that album cover: she’s not riding him like that for nothing [Editor’s note: how else do you think a human broom is powered?]. Weibermacht (“Female Power”), the sophomore album by these New York experimentalists, is a “celebratory hymn to the practices of BDSM, particularly, Femdom.” This one is for all you freaks out there who wanted more kinky metal after Obsidious’s masterpiece “Sense of Lust.” Pleasure through punishment.

Folterkammer play fairly standard black metal, but vocalist Andromeda Anarchia completes the band, a true opera singer in metal. Her perfectly controlled vocal agility spans the gamut from dizzyingly high notes which are far beyond the typical scope of metal to slides into snarls and wailing shrieks. Weibermacht’s highlight “Algolagnia” excels because of Anarchia’s vocals, demonstrating mind-fellating range: manic ramblings, horrifying shrieks, and soprano operatics. Centering Weibermacht around Anarchia’s vocals pays its dividends and she is clearly the lifeblood of Folterkammer.

Instrumentally, Weibermacht isn’t quite as gloriously impressive, playing mid-paced black metal that simply sets the stage for Anarchia to sing about her sexcapades. Mixed by Steve Blanco (Imperial Triumphant) and mastered by the master himself Colin Marston, you can safely bet that Weibermacht sounds amazing; all the performances shine, even the bass as rare as that is in black metal. Zachary Ezrin’s (Imperial Triumphant) twisted neoclassical riffs sound like a mix between Fleshgod Apocalypse and 1914 while bassist and main composer Darren Hanson provides a solid low-range counterpoint for the soprano. However, all across the album the band loses the neoclassical aspect of the riffs, turning them into slightly bland second-wave worship with a standout vocalist. Twice on Weibermacht—in opener “Anno Domina” and closer “Das Peitschengedicht”—Folterkammer experiment with excellently composed harpsichord, and I wish the band leaned further into this because those sections feel like a more complete integration of classical opera and metal. Weibermacht is tight, but with more experimentation it could be even stronger. 

Of course, the lyrics, sung entirely in German, are kinky as hell as previously alluded to (thanks Google Translate!), taking an angle of feminine empowerment through sexual domination of their masculine counterparts. Whips become calligraphy pens for writing poetry in blood (as stated by the band about lead single “Das Peitschengedicht,” feet are smelt, and asses are licked. This is a contentious angle for feminism—many contemporary scholars view sadomasochism as a tool weaponized by the patriarchy against women—but I feel Folterkammer effectively pull it off, thanks to Anarchia’s powerful vocals, no doubt. 

Weibermacht suffers in two fashions—and I don’t mean suffers from perverse sexual acts: nearly every track ends with Anarchia chanting the same phrase ad nauseam and the band rarely creeps past allegretto. The counts of the whips on “Anno Domina” are so absurd they crack me up, but the section is far too cheesy for a largely serious album, and the repetitive track endings are frustrating when the band have such dynamic song structures for the majority of each track; the problem is exacerbated by Anarchia’s chants being completely harsh for these endings when her clean vocals are what makes the project as unique as it is. Finally, some faster pacing would go a long way toward caulking up any cracks in Weibermacht [Editor’s note: this is not a sexy turn of phrase and clitorises shriveled up and died when you wrote this], but that’s personal preference.

Folterkammer’s debut was refreshing, and the band has drastically refined themselves since 2020—particularly Hanson’s compositional skills. Despite the minor shortcomings, Weibermacht is one of the most exciting projects in contemporary black metal, excelling in their creativity and Anarchia’s stellar vocal performance. In the best year for symphonic black metal ever with the likes of Ihsahn, Lamentari, and Aquilus, Folterkammer has little problem sticking with the big guns, and their trajectory is surely only upwards.

Recommended tracks: Anno Domina, Die Unterwerfung, Algolagnia, Das Peitschengedicht
You may also like: Véhémence, Passeisme, Obsequiae, La Suspendida, SkyThala, Thy Darkened Shade
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Century Media – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Folterkammer is:
Andromeda Anarchia – Vocals
Zachary Ezrin – Guitars
Brendan McGowan – Drums
Darren Hanson – Guitars
Laurent David – Bass

The post Review: Folterkammer – Weibermacht appeared first on The Progressive Subway.