Kronet til Konge shows what happens when a genre overshoots its inertia. Everything labeled “Norwegian black metal” with “that sound” was selling like hotcakes, which is a rare position for metal to find itself in. The fans, labels and magazines howled for more, which is always a sign that the quantity-over-quality groupthink has arrived. This band pasted together a bunch of riffs and called it an album.
The result shows us how important metal songwriting is: it’s not just about the riffs. Good metal comes from arranging riffs so they talk to each other to create “heavy” moments which feel like realizations (or provoke them). Normal rock is designed to distract you or get you lost in a sea of bittersweet conflicting emotions. Metal builds up illusions and tears them down, then inverts the whole structure to show you a hidden truth. This is the mythological nature of metal.
Dodheimsgard are talented musicians. They have about one good riff idea per song, and are musically adept enough to cook up the other riffs and bits necessary to tie it together into a song, but these are addressing the riff itself and not some underlying topic or feeling for the song. As a result, these songs feel random and convey nothing, although it’s hard to come to this conclusion when caught in a quality riff. But the sum has to be more than the total of its parts and that leap to greatness is not made here.
Tags: 1995, Black Metal, dodheismgard, Norwegian Black Metal
Brett:
You mentioned a long time ago in the DLA FAQ that doom metal is either heavy metal or death metal played at a slow tempo. My question to you is, do you consider the style tagged “funeral doom” to be death metal played very slowly or is it a subgenre in its own ?? Say bands like Esoteric, Skepticism and Disimbowelment ?
Thanks !
The same thing applies. Esoteric is a heavy metal/doom-death mix, Skepticism is doom-death turned up to 11 (or down to 11 bpm), and Disembowelment I associate more with grindcore for its patchwork melange of styles.
fuckin sick ass logo design tho
I think I’ve listened to this album maybe twice. I’ve always considered monumental possession to be their finest hour, but even then they’re decent Norwegian black metal at best. Nothing really great. The avant-garde albums that followed are atrocious.
Dudehomosregards was never that great, honestly.