Vanhelga
Sommar

Immediately when looking at Vanhelga’s latest album Sommar (which means summer) I am struck by an obvious flaw, the cover doesn’t look at all like summer. It looks cold and dull, kind of like the late autumn when all the leaves has fallen and the colours have changed into grey and cold in a wait for the winter. To me summer is warm and inviting, a joyous time as opposed to the dreadful winters with lots of snow and cold temperatures, I think that black metal is more of a winter thing and more melodic stuff is the summery bits. So, have they missed the plot these guys? Well, to be honest I have no idea, I cannot hear what they are singing and this despite the fact that they actually have a guy in this duo doing only lyrics, that at least is a complete waste. It is kind of like writing a fantastic novel by hand and then just running it through the paper shredder.

But what about the other aspects of the music? The sound is poor and cheap, kind of like Ikea quality (meaning a waste of time and money). The vocals are not only inaudible, the singer has a hoarse voice that is the same as any singer in this kind of black metal. I think the album is a bit depressing, maybe mainly because I waster several hours listening to it. It does not convey any kind of summery feeling, more of a darkest winter feeling, you know that cold time when you just want to remain indoor under a blanket watching a good movie or enjoying a good album. There is a spoken word part but I never bothered caring about what was being said as I was so bored at that point so I couldn’t care less.

I don’t really like this album, or EP as they seem to call it despite it being more than half an hour long. I think it is just too poorly produced, the vocals are not articulated enough to bring any kind of meaning to the songs and the songs are monotonous and dull all the way through. One has to wonder about these one man things, as it is a one man thing except the lyrics, they are rarely good so maybe a bit of input from other members of a band is really needed in order to really get anything out of these ideas. Although I doubt anything like that would have made any significant difference to this album as I think the ideas are quite poor to begin with. Although I seem to be in a minority having this opinion as most reviewers seem to regard this as quite good although quite good on the internet is really at best quite average as seven of ten seem to be the prevailing score amongst internet reviewers and albums they don’t care that much for. But there were one or two more positive reviews as well so maybe I just don’t understand the greatness in music that I can’t really consider music. But as I like a wide variety of music and have written positively about a number of extreme metal bands I should at least be considered to be able to like it but I don’t.

I think that this album would have been best unheard, it has no redeeming features other than perhaps the playing time which at least is relatively short albeit too long to really endure anyway. I find it poorly produced with really bad sound, the vocals are terrible and the songs are dreary dull things that makes you wish you were somewhere summery listening to something good instead. Lets just say that it is not really my cup of tea.

HHHHHHH