http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16470-vattnet-viskar/
Vattnet Viskar
Vattnet Viskar
Broken Limbs; 2012
Rating=7.9
About six minutes into "Intention/Oblivion", the second of three tracks on the auspicious debut EP from New England's Vattnet Viskar, the black-metal quartet slinks suddenly away from the expected melee. (Note that Pitchfork contributor Kim Kelly does PR for Vattnet Viskar's label.) Drummer Matt St. Jean stops playing altogether, while frontman Nicholas Thornbury's pit-of-the-stomach bellow dissipates into a decrescendo. The guitars go quiet, too, now plucking each note of a riff with great patience and from a distance. This oasis of stillness invokes most every metal album ever dubbed atmospheric, epic, or post-anything; of particular relevance, it's precisely the kind of two-to-three-minute impasse that split records by black metallurgists like Agalloch, Katatonia, or even Wolves in the Throne Room into dramatic and more relatable sections. But don't press stop, even if it seems you've heard this before.
The moment is exactly that-- a moment. After only a few seconds, Vattnet Viskar move along again, the drums building back toward a blast, Alan Sobodacha's bass fortifying the plucked riff. The guitars blur, and the band barrels ahead: That bit of gentle pause is instantly, completely forgotten. All of this takes maybe two minutes, meaning that Vattnet Viskar employ an economy that's rare on this side of heavy metal. This three-track, 27-minute EP, for instance, opens with field recordings, tolling bells, and a whispered Latin invocation, a trope-abiding introduction if ever there was one. But after less than 20 seconds of "Weakness", the din of a guitar's feedback bifurcates the sound of the bells, and the whole intro begins to crumble beneath a bed of electronic rumble, as if Merzbow were behind the mixing board. When it all disappears, Vattnet Viskar steam in at full volume, Thornbury growling lines about emotional vacuity above a gale worthy of Immortal. Once again, what might take their more established peers the better part of your lunchtime takes these upstarts from a small New Hampshire town less than a minute.
All this talk of restraint and efficiency might seem strange for a band that closes its debut with the 13-minute "Barren Earth". Within that span, though, Vattnet Viskar make several seamless shifts, moving from a foreboding acoustic start into a full-speed shriek, through a razor-wire guitar drone into a beastly closing surge. With each of those phases, they sculpt the form's brittle roar exceptionally well, letting two guitars pull against each other, each clamoring for space and attention. After just 27 minutes of a career (excepting last year's two-song demo), they've managed to marry ambition and efficiency without a single misstep.
Of late, black metal in the United States-- however excellent it might have been-- has often hinged on headlines and talking points. But Vattnet Viskar has no manifesto with which to proselytize, no extreme ideology or infamy over which to bicker, and no yarn about life on the ol' Cascadian farm with which to allure. Sure, to an extent, they're vegan environmentalists from Plaistow, New Hampshire, a town so seemingly quaint that its official history includes a proud section about something called "The Deodorized Order of the Skunk" and another about how local Girl Scouts have "helped shape the moral and civic sensibilities of Plaistow girls for many decades." Aside from some surprisingly wide-eyed lyrics that explore general themes of existential nihilism and a desire to tear down antiquated systems and build anew, none of those concerns really become a factor here. Vattnet Viskar is simply a strong start from a band that has tapped into the current transmogrification of black metal and proclaimed-- quickly, restlessly, and enthusiastically-- that it has something to say about the process.
