Taake : "Kong Vinter"

It's fitting that I am reviewing the new Taake on Black Friday. From the first song I can tell things are more polished in some ways.The vocals are what you call expect from Hoest who once again is also taking on every thing else in a way that makes this one man band sound very organic like it's four guys jamming in a room, which is a feat in and of itself. Like the other albums released in the past ten years there is some rock n roll influence mixed in with the trappings you now expect of black metal. The vocals have a more hateful scowl on the darker "Inntrenger". It is more melodic than the opener, which helps to win me over. There is a more depressive feel to the pulse of the song.

Judging by the song titles the third and fourth songs are meant to be an inversion of each other. The first of these finds the bass taking a more prominent role in the angular riff that starts off the song and is the most least likely thing I would expect to hear on a black metal album. Two and a half minutes in t is a riff that would not be out of place on earlier Chelsea Wolfe. The vocals on this song the most layered so far. The fourth song proves to be an inversion in the sense that the third song is what you would not expect from black metal while the fourth song is what you would expect. Though if we are taking into consideration expectations , It is more along the lines of Enslaved than what I expect from Taake, minus the clean vocals . The drums do stray from the blast beat to give more of a disco swing on the high hat. The riff takes some twists and turns , making it more progressive than anything I have heard from this project before.

The album begins to get mired down in more conventional forms of black metal until hitting the more majestic gallop of "Maanebrent" which is clean and precise much like Enslaved, or at least the Enslaved albums of the past decade. As the song progresses the chord modulations become more interesting. Oddly the album ends with a ten minute instrumental, which is decent , but takes less risks than some of the songs we heard earlier in the album.I'' give this album an 8.5 , it starts off strong then the sense of adventure wanes. I think it sounds great and fans of this project should be open to the changes.