Arson Cafe: Dødheimsgard - Black Medium Current Review

Saturday, April 15, 2023

Dødheimsgard - Black Medium Current Review

Extraordinary, avantgarde post-modernism undulating between inconceivable boundaries, Norway's Dødheimsgard unveil their latest labyrinthine construction Black Medium Current after the monumental previous work A Umbra Omega from 2015. With terrifically unique musicians and an astonishing trajectory over the last 30 years, the band presents a record that is strongly personal and rightfully so, awfully multi-layered. Expertise and sophistication shines through, it's guaranteed you haven't heard anything like this before except from the band itself and it's one of the cases of a piece that deserves the term "experimental" in a very wholesome manner.

Black Medium Current clocks at 1 hour and 9 minutes, about the same duration like A Umbra Omega, so it constitutes another hefty chapter in Dødheimsgard’s discography, that needs its time for the dust to settle once a first session is through. Uncommon becomes common with this band’s music, and the listener is trained to not be thrown off balance by anything that comes their way, as it’s a the general order of things that you don’t know what’s around the corner with Black Medium Current. At the same time, the record makes it easier to draw comparisons with other subgenres, something highly unusual for Dødheimsgard.

Opening with the highlight “Et Smelter”, which has a handful of different sections that are all wonderful and sets an almost post-black metal tone (apart from the wacky ending), the same tempo continues on the second track “Tankespinnerens Smerte”. The first really turbulent moment of the album is at the end of third track “Interstellar Nexus” and especially its connection to the almost 80’s sensuous clean guitar, middle-paced introduction of “It Does Not Follow”.

A clearer black metal direction is found at “Set Tomme Kalde More” which is to me, another highlight. Less interesting to me were the slower moments, especially in tracks like “Hallow” and “Abyss Perihelion Transit”, and the piano segments “Voyager” and the final track “Requiem Aeternum” are excellent, but in both cases vocals on top were really unnecessary. In a way, Black Medium Current feels a bit less otherworldly than previous material of the band, but that’s only because previous material has been extremely otherworldly.

I can never say Dødheimsgard surpassed themselves with this record, but it is packed, interesting and full of twists and turns. Since A Umbra Omega’s contained inspiration and particularity is unparalleled, one should rather approach this as a completely new body.

Out on April 14th, 2023 | Peaceville Records

DAMAGE: 3.5/5 [Great]

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Reckoning

From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lighted from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world. We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the earth rolled down. Our minds were light-years distant, forgetful of almost everything.