Review Summary: Until the fog takes us
On paper, Taake have all the trappings of an all time black metal band. They're Norwegian, have just enough controversy to seem a little dangerous but not enough to get written off wholesale and more than anything, they manage to ride that fine line between being unwaveringly committed to black metal as a sound and aesthetic while also having shown that they can color outside the lines just a little to keep things interesting. Very few black metal bands could have a banjo passage attain near meme status in the community while still maintaining their image the way Taake has.
Although a little late to the party, releasing their first album in 1999, this approach combined with three back to back classic records allowed Taake to cement their position amongst the classic second wave acts of the 90s. Their output since has struggled to achieve that level of quality again but always maintaining enough for fans to keep the hope alive that the guys may still have it in them to bring those glory days back.
That hope begins to falter with 2026’s
En Skog av Nidstang and it does so in some of the most frustrating ways. The album starts off promising as
Einstoeingen og eg jumps straight into some classic second wave guitar riffs, nothing groundbreaking but Taake delivering the goods as per usual. The song keeps this momentum going for a few minutes before things start to waver. At around the three minute mark, following an odd transition into an odd riff the song veers off course and never quite seems to find its footing again. The song, like much of the album that follows, starts to feel like a riff salad with very little connecting the different components other than them existing together. And while some of the sections are definitely enjoyable, without any overarching through line, the stronger sections appear as isolated moments of brilliance that fail to hold up the overall experience and the weaker moments (like the attempt at a groovy section in
Et dyr tok min hud) stand out like sore thumbs.
But these moments are ultimately the exceptions. More than anything, the album is a collection of mostly competently written riffs that plod for 8 to 10 minutes, never really seeming to go anywhere until the song ends and moves on to the next.
Unfortunately on
En Skog av Nidstang, Taake struggle to offer much that glimmers and wind up losing themselves in the fog that is their namesake. If there is a positive to hold onto here it is that the band doesn’t seem to have forgotten how to write riffs, they just need to figure out what to do with them when they do. As it stands,
En Skog av Nidstang delivers a lot of them but very little else.
