Svart
Det Personliga Helvetets Spiral

The spiral of personal hell, that is what Swedish black metal band Svart offer, clever name for a black metal band as Svart means black. It is a one man band by a man who calls himself Draug, a side project with two albums in the baggage, so this is the third one. It has a fairly uninteresting cover. Not knowing anything about this project I cannot say I had any good hopes for it considering that one man black metal project tends to be awful. But of course you can never judge a book by its cover which is something I have noticed many times.

It is black metal with a melodic and atmospheric touch. Maybe a tad of progressiveness is to be found here as well. The vocals vary between clean and growly ones, both vocal styles are quite common for the genre so nothing surprising there I would say. Mostly blackish vocals is what catches my attention, good production with a sound that works very well for this kind of music. Some of the paths outside the traditional black metal tend to get a bit longish, and the album itself tend to feel a bit long despite the variation which is quite big and the album is not longer than 46 minutes either. It still feels on the long side. Vocals is Swedish is fun though.

It is a quite good album despite these little dreary parts. Of course this kind of music is not really my thing and I struggle a bit with the album even though it is way ahead of much of its genre peers. I think the biggest letdown is that the melodic parts aren’t quite good enough for the album to really shine. I have liked listening to the album but I am sure that I will not miss it when I now leave it and probably never return to it.

If you like this kind of melodic extreme metal I am quite sure that you will find this album an exciting and interesting one. It should also be added that it should be taken as a whole rather than playing single tracks as I think it works much better as a whole as no track is a hit one. And it is surprisingly good as I have already alluded to, definitely worth taking a look at for those of you who like the melodic extreme metal. Good atmosphere and feel, unfortunately it tends to stagnate in some parts.

HHHHHHH