Grift : " Syner"

Atmospheric black metal is rarely done right, while you should expect an extreme metal band to go to extremes, too often there is no balance and the music is so minimalist it is barely there or it's just the same of blast beats with different icing on top. This project out of Sweden understands that the most important thing about atmosphere is capturing the mood. The vocals are a dry throaty rasp that has more emotion behind them than your average scalding screaming. There is a more depressive suicidal slant to the way they allow their voice to crack like they are having a mental breakdown in the vocal booth. At eight and a half minutes there is a place in final minute where I looked up to see if the song had changed, but to their credit the drone engulfs you.

"Svaltoma" brings a almost Cure like guitar melody to a post- prison  Burzum throb. Rather than just feeling the obligation to have screaming the vocal part as harsh as it maybe makes an attempt to establish it self in a pattern similar to how an actual sung vocal might go. The guitar tone is like soaring shoe gaze in places , but I would put this at the very fringe of the whole black gaze thing since it is much rawer. Then the album hits a place closer to Lifelover's more melodic moments on "There is a slight tinge of folk metal in the way this one swings, but it never gets upbeat. On 'Slutet Hav" the atmosphere is laid on thick as this instrumental turns into a weird hybrid of shoe gaze meets folk metal, not calling it neo-folk because that makes me think of Death In June or Rome. The song which follows gets heavier, but the focus is still very much on a dark melody and ambiance balanced in the structure of an actual song. 

The closing song runs more along the lines of conventional metal, it is not burdened by an abundance of blast beats , but still has powerful drive. The shift in guitar tone on the solo is cool as it has an almost western sound. I look forward to hearing what this project does in the future, it's drone numbs me out at times, the songs have a ton of feeling, so if you are moving on from depressive suicidal black metal or want something with more balls than your average black gaze band this is for you. I'll give it an 8.5