Sort Vokter
Folkloric Necro Metal
[Norse League]
Of all Ildjarn’s work, this stands out as being the most advanced, developed and
complex record. Similarities to his Ildjarn albums can be traced, yet his reason
for using a different name for this is obvious.
Sort Vokter is evil, nocturnal, natural ambient black metal with an enormous emotional and intellectual intensity that is captured only by the select few elite artists during their whole lifetimes. Like all of Ildjarn’s work, this is un-technical and minimalistic. The intense, rhythmically throbbing bass is clearly audible in the production and carries the chords of the song under the over-distorted guitars, whose expression is only heard as a static noise with no audial distinction between different played chords. The drum-machine plays fast, unnatural, simplistic rhythms with no obvious attention paid to their programming. The vocals are vicious screams that occasionally sprawl at inhuman levels like a nocturnal demon hunting for prey. Rather than brutal or painful, this screams are the embodiment of power in the freedom of wilderness and nature, exclamations of bestial ecstasy in the highest levels of consciousness and existence. The keyboards here are utilized in an almost un-Ildjarn-like diversity, most of the times peaceful and ambient, epic and symphonic in the first track "Kveldstimer" and repeating a simple careless major-chord folk-melody for nine minutes in the last track "Fjellstev".
And, like all Ildjarn’s work, this is very environmental. The inspirational elements in this music are not to be found inside, and the purpose of this music is not communication. "Sort Vokter represent no political or ideological views", as it reads on the record sleeve. And this is to be interpreted on a level higher than the mundane, uninvolved one. Sort Vokter is ritualistic music in it’s purest essence. Sort Vokter is simply transcendental and for a listener able to project himself into the environment created by this art, to create inside the creation and create the creation again within himself, this might be one of the most important musical experiences in his lifetime.
An academical analysis of the title produces a most accurate summary of this record:
folkloric = pertaining to the lore of a people
necro = borrowing from Greek, with the meaning "dead", "corpse" or "death" in the formation of compound words
metal = any of a class of elementary substances, or a musical genre associated with freedom and individualism
© 1999 black hate
Sort Vokter is evil, nocturnal, natural ambient black metal with an enormous emotional and intellectual intensity that is captured only by the select few elite artists during their whole lifetimes. Like all of Ildjarn’s work, this is un-technical and minimalistic. The intense, rhythmically throbbing bass is clearly audible in the production and carries the chords of the song under the over-distorted guitars, whose expression is only heard as a static noise with no audial distinction between different played chords. The drum-machine plays fast, unnatural, simplistic rhythms with no obvious attention paid to their programming. The vocals are vicious screams that occasionally sprawl at inhuman levels like a nocturnal demon hunting for prey. Rather than brutal or painful, this screams are the embodiment of power in the freedom of wilderness and nature, exclamations of bestial ecstasy in the highest levels of consciousness and existence. The keyboards here are utilized in an almost un-Ildjarn-like diversity, most of the times peaceful and ambient, epic and symphonic in the first track "Kveldstimer" and repeating a simple careless major-chord folk-melody for nine minutes in the last track "Fjellstev".
And, like all Ildjarn’s work, this is very environmental. The inspirational elements in this music are not to be found inside, and the purpose of this music is not communication. "Sort Vokter represent no political or ideological views", as it reads on the record sleeve. And this is to be interpreted on a level higher than the mundane, uninvolved one. Sort Vokter is ritualistic music in it’s purest essence. Sort Vokter is simply transcendental and for a listener able to project himself into the environment created by this art, to create inside the creation and create the creation again within himself, this might be one of the most important musical experiences in his lifetime.
An academical analysis of the title produces a most accurate summary of this record:
folkloric = pertaining to the lore of a people
necro = borrowing from Greek, with the meaning "dead", "corpse" or "death" in the formation of compound words
metal = any of a class of elementary substances, or a musical genre associated with freedom and individualism
© 1999 black hate