Review Summary: A simple and essential DSBM release.
Depression is quite an impactful topic in life, and most of us (or maybe all of us) have already experienced this feeling and mindset. And certainly, we all came across it in music as well.
DSBM
(=depressive suicidal black metal) is a branch or subgenre of black metal which is heavily influenced by this hopeless and grim side of life, and in my opinion, nothing really ever captured this state of mind so perfectly as DSBM or as this artist does.
Selvhat (literally translated: "self hate") has nothing to do with burning churches or anything like that. This solo-project by Steingrim Torson (RIP) focuses on the inner struggle, the despair, the blunt and meaningless existence... It is not easy to get out of this mental collapse, but staying productive, creating something could help. Capturing feelings and emotions is certainly a strong and well-known driving force of
art - and when dealing with depression, perhaps we could see this as an "escape pod" from... ourselves.
Den Svarte Tid is a special album, since in my opinion it perfectly embodies this certain mood. Unlike most black metal releases, this demo runs on a rather slow tempo and most of the time it contains only instrumental sections. During the few times when the vocals are present, they always sound deeply sunk in the mix, letting the guitars and the drums dominate in creating the album's atmosphere. The slow (sometimes even droney), highly distorted and repetitive guitars accompanied by equally repetitive and very pleasantly organic drums work very effectively, since they capture that certain blunt and continously grim feeling perfectly. In the last enormous (more than twenty minutes long) song,
Befrielsens Pine, an additional synth is noticable, which results an interesting cold and dreamy feel to the song - similarly to the effect of synths in
Hvis lyset tar oss.
Den Svarte Tid is just as simple as it sounds, but that's why it is so brilliant: it presents a harsh, grim and depressing atmosphere through an extremly simple concept, and in my opinion this release is clearly one of the greatest DSBM albums ever.
