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: thall, dubstep (intsrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Vildhjarta, Stoort Neer, Humanity’s Last Breath, The Doom (2016) OST
Country: France
Release date: 1 January 2025

Thall, the style of music created and coined by the now decades old Vildhjarta, has always been an intriguing genre. For one, many do not even consider it a genre at all but just another offshoot of djent; to these people, yet another delineation of what is already a tenuously defined sub-genre itself is unhelpful, especially when there are so few bands actually operating in the scene. If you had asked me my opinion a year ago, I would have agreed. After all, three Swedish bands sharing members (Vildhjarta, Stoor Neer, Humanity’s Last Breath) does not make a genre. But recently, things have changed; be it through the growing underground success of bands like Fractalize and Frostbitt or the more viral sensations of Catsclaw and Hjarna Waves, thall is starting to look like something real. However, for every banger the emerging genre produces there seems to be twice as many duds. My colleagues have already lampooned the likes of Culak and Aaru, but it seems the task has fallen to me to tackle the new release of the somehow wildly popular Mirar.

Employing a style of modern instrumental metal that feels as though it were made for flashy TikTok videos as opposed to serious listening, Mirar dropped Ascension on New Year’s Day, and, like most years, it begins promisingly and then immediately squanders all potential. That is to say, the soundscape of opener “Couronne” is truly well done: the delicately tremolo-picked acoustic guitar accompanied by the luxurious layers of french horn and reverbed out synths gave me hope for what was to come; I even—although we won’t let Andy know this—was reminded of Caio Lemos’ work with Brii, though my hope was quickly dispelled. “Tombe,” the track that follows begins with such a non-sequitur from the opener that it is almost comical; I’m sure the shock was intended, but the decision to push it to such an extreme speaks to a lack of restraint that plagues the rest of the album.

From the intro of “Tombe” and onward, Ascension consists entirely of endless variations on what seems to be the same exact riff. Whammy pedal induced squeals replace every other note with an ear-piercing grate and various pick scrapes and harmonics obscure the rest. Beyond the squeals, there is so little actual tonal content on this release that the tracks where it occurs like on “Charnier” and “Épreuve” become standouts simply by acting as reprieves from the din. And I’m no bitch when it comes to dissonance; I’m the guy who put six dissodeath albums on his best of 2024 list. The way the shrieks are applied on Ascension—except for a few key moments on tracks like “Faux-Amis” and “Confiance” where they harmonize with the backing piano—is, to me, the antithesis of good riff writing.

Mirar does actually get staggeringly close to quality music at several points. For one, the production across Ascension is actually stellar: the guitar tone is throaty and violent, often sounding more like dubstep bass than guitar; the synthesized drums are punchy and effective; and the bass, although it never shines on its own, emphasizes each riff with a satisfying heft. Surely it’s the production that keeps so many people coming back to Mirar right? Don’t tell me people actually like these riffs. When I turn my brain off, I can see myself cleaving demons apart with this as the soundtrack to the next Doom game, but even that primal utility only goes so far in the face of endlessly shrieking guitar.

I absolutely adored måsstaden under vatten when it released in 2021, and I still regularly return to en glad titel på en sorglig skiva; but when I look back, it’s not the production wizardry and clever whammy pedal use that made me fall in love with Vildhjarta and Stoort Neer. The strength of these bands, and in thall as a whole, is in its ability to take their unorthodox riffage and eerie soundscapes and transform them into powerful, evocative music. That’s the reason I still get chills every time I start up måsstaden under vatten and hear the ending of “lavender haze.” That’s why people flock to this sub-genre within a sub-genre. When I listen to Ascension, though, I simply feel nothing. Unfortunately, Mirar seems to have forgotten the strength of their ancestors, and there’s nothing worse than boring djent.

Recommended tracks: Charnier, Épreuve, Faux-Amis, Confiance
You may also dislike: Culak, Aaru
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Label: Independent

Mirar is:
– Léo Watremez
– Marius Elfstedt

The post Review: Mirar – Ascension appeared first on The Progressive Subway.