SOLEFALD

You could call any album by these crazy Norwegians "original, unusual." You could come up with a thousand words to describe this "unusualness," but they all become meaningless the moment the music starts playing. In this case, even the fairly broad prefix "avantgarde" describes the Norwegians' music in a one-sided and narrow way. As is well known, the band's early work leaned more decidedly toward black metal, then the group made a powerful shift toward avant-garde, and the last couple of albums represent the quintessence of the best from both incarnations of the collective. The harsh black metal component and the "unhinged" avant-garde element coexist here with equal comfort (well, okay, the latter does slightly prevail). On the album, the listener is treated to the traditional hellish mixture of heavy guitars, stunningly beautiful vocal parts (growls and screams are also present), tender violin passages; powerful blastbeats alternate with quasi-jazz fragments (the saxophone even makes a couple of appearances -- previously spotted in the band's music as well). The album's music is packed to the brim with the most diverse melodic ideas (it's not in the Norwegians' nature to be stingy in that regard), and will not give the listener the slightest chance to get bored. However, no matter how verbose I may be in this review, no words of mine could adequately convey the full spectrum of feelings that arise while listening. So don't read -- listen instead. The album is well worth it.