One of my favorite Funeral Doom Metal acts has made his VERY long-awaited return. 10 years TO THE DAY after the highly acclaimed Galgenfrist, Nortt has finally graced us with some more top-notch forest-dwelling misery in the form of some of the lowliest, dirtiest and most dismal Blackened Doom you’ll hear this decade. If you’re familiar with Nortt, then this one will be no different to you, as nothing much has changed. This is still the same Nortt from a decade ago and this is still his brand of simple yet effective Blackened Doom that can best be summed up as the musical equivalent of a rotting corpse… which is probably why not much has changed. Corpses don’t change much, now do they? Endeligt is an album that couldn’t have possibly been on my year-end list, simply because it came out the fucking day before New Years Eve, but it could have been at least a close contender for a spot on it. Nortt has always been an act that didn’t need anything fancy or too out-there to get it’s point across and endear you. It’s always been more about the feeling it can give off and the trance it can put you in with only it’s sound and atmosphere than about the music itself. It follows the basic formula that proper Funeral Doom has always exhibited, and that formula never included getting you amped up or headbanging. This is slow and eerie music with the sole purpose of leaving you as unsettled and creeped out as possible, or even relaxed, depending on how you view it. This is cold, ambient and quietly unquiet Blackened Doom that’s best listened to in the dark and with the heat turned off in the dead of winter. Even after a decade, this musical rotting corpse is still quite a scary one.
While I can’t exactly call this my favorite Nortt album, nor will it go down as one of his best, it’s still as precise and comprehensive as an album of his can get and it gives off the same creepy and uncomfortable yet strangely relaxing vibe that all of his albums do, and it’s just as engaging as the previous outings. Some may find it repetitive and tired, but this is the kind of Funeral Doom sound that I adore and it has yet to get old for me, for Nortt or any other band of this variety that I dig. I get that the droning, ambient style isn’t for everyone, it may bore some to fucking tears, and trust me, there are some moments, even on this album, that I found quite boring, but when it gets interesting, it gets really fucking interesting and it keeps my interest afloat while entrancing me at the same time. Especially when i’m in a specific mood for it. Andægtigt Dødsfald is a great opener for this album with an unsettling, almost 80s horror soundtrack-esque ambient intro that drones on for quite a bit until the dense, muddy guitars bleed in with a slow, dragging riff that leads the swampy, crawling drums and ghoulish shrieks through the other half of the track. The vocals are as grimy and nasty as ever, as the shrieks compliment the atmosphere and instrumentation finely. The deathly tone that’s created here is so visceral that it hits you deep and forces you to feel the effect in full. It’s organic and clearly comes from a real source that the man behind this beast can channel a natural talent for. Even the more straightforward tracks like Lovsang til Mørket and Eftermæle have that impact.
This is one of those albums that not just anyone can make. It takes a true cave-dweller with minimal human relations and a maximum disgust for the world around him to be able to create something so ugly and frightening. Funeral Doom is a genre that there’s definitely a formula to that not all acts get nor can pull off, but this is indeed Funeral Doom done right and consistently well. It’s dreary, dismal, filthy, muddy and it does what it’s supposed to do using only a continuous riff, snarling vocals with hella reverb and pounding, swampy drums under eerie atmospheric production that makes you feel like you’re somewhere you don’t belong. Again, this isn’t my favorite example of this, I still much prefer the previous couple of outings by Nortt, but it’s still a good example regardless. It’s good for late nights on camping trips in the woods or just casual forest-dwelling or even just relaxing while filing yourself up with caffeine, which is more than enough for me.
So, all in all, if you’re on the fence about this one or worried about Nortt doing the same-old, same-old here, well… he pretty much does, but it’s still effective. At least for me it was. The outcome may be different for you, but it’s still worth a shot. Give it a listen and see. Nortt is definitely still Nortt and after a decade, he still remains high up in my rankings. Especially when it comes to downright creepiness and epicness.
Thy Kingdom Scvm 