DØDHEIMSGARD

DODHEIMSGARD began in 1994 Oslo as a fairly typical second wave black metal band in the likes of Darkthrone, Satyricon and a large number of other bands taking metal into the depths of darkness but like many early players got a bit bored with the one-dimensionality of the scene and by the band's third album "666 International" went rogue by taking black metal into the world of the avant-garde with heavy doses of industrial bleakness, occasional jazzy interludes and a sense of wackiness more reserved for totally unhinged bands like Mr Bungle but somehow the band showcased an extreme discipline in crafting an album's worth of exciting musical motifs that defied logic with reckless abandon and ultimately put DODHEIMSGARD on its own trajectory of the ever-expanding black metal scene.


In the 1990s the band released a total of three albums and an EP all with the span of a four year period but in the 21st century has only released a mere three making us wonder if DODHEIMSGARD will ever release another album or just simply disappear into the past. Well luckily the band is simply more obsessed with quality over quantity and has released its sixth overall album in 2023 titled BLACK MEDIUM CURRENT, a whopping eight years since its avant-garde bombshell "A Umbra Omega." Like every album since the 1998's EP "Satanic Art," DODHEIMSGARD has once again taken its music into new territories without jettisoning the sounds that came before. Still primarily stepped in second wave black metal with the addition of industrial bleakness, BLACK MEDIUM CURRENT jettisons a lot of the brutal progressive hairpin turns and surreal nature for a much more melodic and emotional expansive release.

Yes indeed. Still experimental as ever, DODHEIMSGARD has forsaken a ruthless attack of the senses for a more easily connective style that incorporates folk music melodies along with the melodic underpinnings of the original second wave black metal scene only with a top notch production and mixing job that allows every element to live up to its full potential, an attribute that has been the band's bailiwick for well over two decades. Once again this is a lengthy listening experience as DODHEIMSGARD is very much into anchoring itself in the modern reality and has delivered a near 70-minute roster of nine tracks with the majority exceeding the 7-minute mark. Led by drummer guitarist / drummer / vocalist Vicotnik, the band finds yet another lineup with Lars Emil Måløy of If Nothing Is; "Tommy Guns," or Tommy Thunberg, of Kirkebrann; and Øyvind Myrvoll who is Vicotnik's partner in crime in Dold Vorde Ens Navn and a collaborator of Mayhem's Teloch in Nidingr.

Immediately BLACK MEDIUM CURRENT sets itself apart from it's avant-garde predecessor with a melancholic yet melodic opening "Et Smelter." While the black metal guitar heft and industrial electronic wizardry soon join in, the album remains for its entirely much more accessible than anything since the "Satanic Art" EP with super catchy vocal hooks that anchor the album's accessibility with the avant-garde black metal shenanigans that accompany. While many an extreme metal band has "sold out" their experimental principles for a go at a more accessible and commercial sound, DODHEIMSGARD successfully manages to add all the emotive heart string tugs without sacrificing the insouciant urge to sally forth into the realms of the experimental, a feat that has kept DODHEIMSGARD regarded as one of the most accomplished musical acts in the murky waters where extreme black metal, progressive rock and the experimental avant-garde meet.

Overall this is a masterful accomplishment and although each and every DODHEIMSGARD throws me off guard upon first listen, it more than rewards upon return visits. BLACK MEDIUM CURRENT is no exception in that matter. While i still find "A Umbra Omega" to be the band's most accomplished moment, this sixth album certain is not too far behind although some tracks like "It Does Not Follow" tend to meander at times in a repetitive loop that could've been trimmed down but basically all those masterful guitar licks laced with time signature excesses and hairpin twists and turns that result in high octane industrial metal to slow downtempo fueled electronic chill out moments are still found in plentitude. In essence, DODHEIMSGARD crafts music that is the absolute pinnacle of avant-garde progressive extreme metal with the added bonus of a production job that allows every element to shine like a sparkling diamond. While it would be easy to go astray doing this tightrope act, DODHEIMSGARD has proven time and time again that it was made to bring these hi brow visions of metal utopia to light.

5-star to 1-star ratio for this album is 2:1, yet it's standing pretty high in the top of 2015. It's really cool that PA has this x20 vote system with honoured reviewers usually being pretty open-minded and fair judges. Yet it's quite depressing that a noticeable fraction of people here have ossified perception abilities and a lot of truly progressive albums get lost due to 1-stars from those. But I digress.

A Umbra Omega is nothing like you've heard before. Each of 5 long sophisticated songs switches between genres and moods every few minutes, constantly challenging your sanity. The vocals are absolutely deranged, going from growls to demonic semi-declamation to whimpering. They travel through the whole spectrum of insanity with each vocal part being done in it's own shade of madness, delivering all the types of schizoid state of feeling. Another huge hook for me was the drumming: you can focus your attention on it only and never really get bored. Occasionally bursting into black metal blast-beats, most of the time it's gentle and just pleasant to the ears. Accompanied by melodic bass this creates a perfect ground for the eclectic, intricate avant-garde music to unfold. It will include atonal melodies, pure extreme metal brutality, lots of atmospheric parts, some with a spacey post-rock guitar, some with female vocal harmonies, some with brass section, some with trip-hop electronic, some... I think I've got it across. Some things are hard to describe, you just have to hear them. For example, the 50-second synth nosedive at 4:20 of Unlocking or the cacophony with demonic vocals at 9:20 of God Protocol Axiom. The album throws ideas at you at the frequency of 1 ghz, yet it all holds together as if it were absolutely natural for one album to comprise all those elements.

One prominent thing is that the album is almost completely free of any repetitions. Sometimes I listen to prog music and think "that's nice" but with closer attention comes understanding that it's just some simple melody with embellishments which gets repeated over and over. Sometimes I just think "okay I got it, please play something else al last!" but the artist has no mercy. Well it's not the case here. Things can sometimes be repeated twice, like "I hail those whose pulse beats free" stanza in The Unlocking or the or the vocal crooning in Architect of Darkness, but not more than that - it's like the antonym of your typical repetitive pop-song. This in particular makes the music hard to digest and I suggest not listening to the whole thing in one sit and give time for all those complexities to absorb.

An ultimate exercise in insanity, A Umbra Omega is a beautiful, mysterious and completely unique piece of music. A masterpiece.

Out of all the black metal bands to emerge from the Norwegian scene in the 90s perhaps none have strayed so far from its roots as has Oslo's DØDHEIMSGARD and while not exactly the most prolific band having only released a mere five albums and one EP since its 1994 formation, nevertheless continues to sporadically release some of the most challenging and bizarre avant-garde metal releases that still retain the black metal template which launched their existence. The band which has had numerous lineup changes since its formation has had as many stylistic shifts culminating in the innovative industrial / black metal hybrids of "666 International" and "Supervillain Outcast." The former was released all the way back in 2007 and then the band seemingly fell off the face of the Earth but in reality was slowly conjuring up its biggest surprise of all, namely 2015's fifth full-length release A UMBRA OMEGA (In The Shadow Of Omega).

This is an entirely new lineup for DØDHEIMSGARD with only founding member Vicotnik still around over twenty years later and the result is truly an entirely new sound that takes black metal into even stranger more challenging extremes. This is an album that i had to wait several years to fully grasp as it eluded me for the first few listens, a feat that is almost non-existent in my reality since as a music nerd i'm fairly quick to latch onto musical challenges but despite the fairly accessible opening hooks that exist on A UMBRA OMEGA, the album delivers a labyrinthine system of alternating between high octane black metal outbursts (usually at the beginning of the six tracks and then revisited) along with a mix of everything from post-metal sounding segments, Floydian space rock, classical piano runs and even trip hop amongst others. While not the first to employ such adventurous tactics of juggling disparate genres, the beauty of A UMBRA OMEGA is how seamlessly integrated all these extra touches are stitched together and add a perfectly polished production job and you will be treated to a perfect avant-garde metal delivery if only you have the patience to allow this near impenetrable fortress of sound to open its gates for your arrival.

Like any album that excels in complexities rarely reached in a musical format, A UMBRA OMEGA is one that requires 100% of your attention being focused on every intricate development of the musical flow. If this music is thrown on willy nilly as background music then this will sound like utter gibberish. The six tracks meander all over the place but the melodic development does provide a stream of consciousness which threads it all together so this album isn't as impenetrable as some of the most extreme examples of avant-prog or some of the avant-jazz fueled brutal prog out there. This one almost sounds like it was constructed like an electronica album that implements changes in tone clusters and timbres dressed up in musical styles to convey its message. The tracks start out with bombastic black metal fueled tremolo guitar riffs and blastbeats but after a while they dissolve into more surreal passages that generate electronic fueled space rock accompanied by classical piano. Perhaps even stranger yet is the weird shared vocal styles of Vicotnik and Aldrahn's semi-spoken heartfelt lyrical deliveries that literally sounds like nothing else i've ever heard.

This is definitely a case of a band going for the art rock jugular as this is a truly challenging listening experience where every sonic addition is a stroke on a magnanimous musical canvas where no compromise is made for the sake of the non-musical types out there who don't embrace the pinnacle of artistic evolution and while the whole project may come off a bit self-indulgent and disconnected from the pulse of the commercial metal scene, that's exactly the point. This is the type of musical project that is targeted for those interested in hearing something hitherto unexperienced. After a few years of letting this one sink in, i can only conclude that this is a work of genius and continues the intermittent legacy of Norway's weirdest extreme metal band in perfect form. Clearly DØDHEIMSGARD is a musical project that emphasizes quality over quantity and with A UMBRA OMEGA, the band produced its most intricately sophisticated oeuvre to date. Although Aldrahn departed in 2016, a new album has been purported to be in the making. Where will this strange band go next? It is futile to even attempt such a prediction. Simply wait patiently and find out when that day comes.

After two albums of fairly orthodox and good old fashioned second wave Norwegian black metal, DODHEIMSGARD started to get a lot more experimental and playful with their demented and devilish musical madness. Serving as a tradition of sort, they released an EP titled SATANIC ART in 1998, two years after their second album "Monumental Possession" and a year before their third "666 Internation." SATANIC ART finds the band at an interesting halfway point between their second wave black metal origins and their avant-industrial leanings that follow.

SATANIC ART finds not only another lineup change but a few guest musicians adding all kinds of interesting new elements to the band's new fangled black metal smorgasbord. This EP despite its short duration offers many transitions and not only musically. Svein Egil Hatlevik aka Mr. Dingy Sweet Talker Women Stalker (Fleurety) would debut as keyboardist and Galder (Dimmu Borgir, Old Man's Child) would pick up extra guitar duties but only on this one release. Cerberus replaced Jonas Alver on bass.

"Oneiroscope" introduces the new Dodheimsgard with a piano piece that sounds like demented carnival music in a minor chord or even a psycho-drama flick soundtrack piece with lots of murder scenes. While "Traces Of Reality" reverts into the super bombastic black metal of the past, it is punctuated by a "White Zombie-esque" sampling, eerie atmospheric keyboard effects and most surprisingly the guest musician Paganini virtuosity of guest violinist Stine Lunde. "Symptom" continues the black metal bombast but adds some underpinnings of industrial metal that would surface on "666 International." "The Paramount Empire" also sticks to black metal a la "Monumental Possesion" but with a more loosy-goosy construct. The Finale "Wrapped In Plastic" is another piano driven outro.

Although this EP originally only clocked in at just under sixteen minutes, it exhibited more diverse elements than the first two albums combined. SATANIC ART has been virtually unattainable in a physical format at a decent price for two decades but has found at last a much needed rerelease in 2018 on Peaceville and adds a couple bonus tracks ("Black Treasure" and "Symptom (Alternate)." SATANIC ART is like dipping into the pool of avant-garde possibilities where obviously DODHEIMSGARD got the experimental bug and never looked back. Good for them because this is where they got really interesting and put themselves on the map in the metal world. Despite only being a little EP, this one is a monumental moment in experimental extreme metal.

DODHEIMSGARD jumped into the Norwegian black metal snake pit and became only one of many in the legions of Darkthrone imitators with their debut album "Kronet Til Konge," which showed a group of angry misanthropic metalheads pulling off a really decent carbon copy version of albums like "A Blaze In The Northern Sky," however quickly after they released their rather ho hum debut to the world, the band started to take itself a little more seriously and started upping their game by infusing more creativity into their second wave black metal shtick. While not quite reaching the out of the box approaches that would define them, on their second release MONUMENTAL POSSESSION some of the avant-garde explorations had already started to creep in but in the end this is a black metal album from start to finish.

While firmly steeped in the same black metal world as the debut, MONUMENTAL POSSESSION has a much more diverse palette of ideas this time around. Firstly there are more thrash leanings. While the trebly black metal tremolo picking is ubiquitous as are the blastbeats and buzzsaw guitar distortion, there are many periods of thrash riffing and even soloing. This is a stylistic fusion that would be abandoned in favor of heading down a more experimental industrial path but a blueprint for bands like Aura Noir to adopt in DODHEIMGARD'S stead. Initially released on the Malicious label before the band had become better known, this album had been rare and out of print prior to the 2016 reissue on Peaceville.

MONUMENTAL POSSESSION saw a lineup change, a feature common with many extreme metal bands. While Aldrahn and VIcotnik are back for a second round, Jonas Alver replaces Fenriz on bass and Apollyon joins the grew as second guitarist. Another aspect that makes this album much different than the previous is that Aldrahn, Apollyon and Vicotnik all share vocal duties with each having a distinct style that offers more variations in the vocal department than most black metal releases of the 90s. So in addition to the usual shrieked vocal style, Victonik offers his own bizarre croaked shouts not unlike the vocalist of Inquisition which offers a freakish sensibility to the mix.

The album is bookended by hellish sound collages that offer freaky ghoulish Satanic sounds accompanied by swirling dark ambient turbulence. It sets the tone for the album but the music is unapologetically brutal black metal with thrash elements sewn in for good measure. A huge step up from the debut and a clear link to the future is the fluid and frenetic percussive attack of Vicotnik who offers a much more varied array of drum abuse than the average second wave pummelation of skins. Avant-garde and jazzy, they point to some of the weirdness that would emerge on the most experimental albums like "666 International." Overall, the music falls into the brutally melodic zone with distinct hooks that are augmented by the orotund bombast.

MONUMENTAL POSSESSION is a huge step up in terms of quality from "Kronet Til Konge" in every conceivable manner and while still firmly planted in the black metal universe is a surprisingly consistent and pleasant journey into the sickened Norwegian minds of these face painted miscreants. This is an album i actually enjoy and want to listen to. While this would be the band's last true black metal album, it is one that displays their talents of pulling off more than a mere Darkthrone clone routine and finds the band coming of age just in time to jettison it for something else completely, a trait that would find DODHEIMSGARD drifting from album to album much like Ulver without ditching the metal sound altogether. Not as great as future releases but damn good for an orthodox 90s black metal release.

DØDHEIMSGARD (Norweigian for "Realm Of Death" formed in 1994 in Oslo by Vicotnik (drums), Fenriz (bass) and Aldrahn (lead vocals, guitar). They were yet another band who jumped on the Darkthrone bandwagon of second wave black metal and should be commended for becoming perfect clones on their first album KRONET TIL KONGE ("Crowned To Be King.") All those early black metal traits are here in perfect replication. All the buzz saw guitars and tremolo picking, the shrieked unintelligible vocals and of course the lo-fi demo quality sound production peppered with all the anti-Christian Satanic lyrics (albeit mostly in Norweigian) about slaughtering God, winning the war and all the usual suspects.

While DØDHEIMSGARD would evolve fairly quickly even as soon as their second release "Monumental Possession" which would find them finding their own creative stamp on black metal before they would really delve into the avant-garde and industrial worlds, KRONET TIL KONGE is so generic it hurts after coming to this last after their original and creative run of "Satanic Art" to "A Umbra Omega." In fact if you placed any of these tracks on the first few Darkthrone albums no one would know the difference except for a slightly different sound of the vocals. The song structures are nearly identical as is the overall bleak atmospheric din.

There is nothing really bad about KRONET TIL KONGE either. It's as good as any other standard second wave black metal release of the era, but with a band as original as DØDHEIMSGARD it comes across as woefully substandard and even though i am a huge fans of this band i have skipped this one until i found the 2015 remastered version used in mint condition and took a chance. While i'm happy i have tasted this early roots era of DØDHEIMSGARD, i very much doubt if i'll be throwing this on for listening pleasure. Average and for completists only.

2.5 rounded down

Four full albums in from beginning as a rather ordinary second wave black metal outfit and DØDHEIMSGARD perfected their blackened industrial avant-garde metal sound on SUPERVILLAIN OUTCAST which was introduced on their EP "Satanic Art" and further developed on "666 International." Many changes took place since the last album with the most obvious being that the band shortened their name to DHG and a huge lineup change left almost a completely new band with the only founding member Vicotnik left on his guitar, samples and programming duties. Vocalist Aldrahn left the band and was replaced by Kvohst. The bass baton was passed from Apollyon to Clandestine and Mr Magic Logic's keyboards were dismissed while the other members picked up different secondary instrumental duties. Czral went from official percussionist to the unofficial "additional personnel." With all this dystopia rocking the band's world i would expect the music to sound completely different but despite it all, the music sounds exactly like the next logical step of development in the avant-garde musical world that DØDHEIMSGARD had been leading up to. Only this one is done right. Perfectly so.

SUPERVILLAIN OUTCAST begins with a short intro that makes me think of Chinese music from the 30s or something with the instrumental "Dushman" but violently bursts into black metal fury on "Vendatta Assassin" for a few measures with progressive touches of time signature freak outs and then jumps into the heavily caffeinated industrial metal sound with heavy bass and drums leading the fury and the guitars adding jittery licks at hyper speed all the while Kvohst delivers shouted vocals that are somewhat blackened but he also mixes up his vox box with death growls and whispered industrial sounding utterings. Generally speaking many of the tracks are garnished with heavy black metal riffing that alternate with industrial metal types of power chord riffing while ambient keyboards create eerie howling in the background with heavy percussive blastbeats dominating the rhythmic section and a hyperactive bass interaction to match. There is much attention paid to sound effects and electronic noises and textures to add a whole other dimension behind the metal sounds. Vocals vary quite a bit when not in extreme metal mode. There are several passages with chanting and clean vocals that steer the music into progressive metal territory.

In addition to the majority of hyper-extreme tracks there are a few that stand out from the general feel of the album. "Secret Identity" is a short a cappella track that sounds like monks chanting in some far away monastery and like many of the metal tracks has a slight trace of dissonance. The following "The Vile Delinquents" is full-on industrial metal with choppy industrial riffs and heavy electronica sound effects before erupting into more heavy guitar riffing. "Apocalypticism" sound more alternative metal and reminds me a lot of the track "Caffeine" from Faith No More's "Angel Dust" especially in the vocal phrasing department but also has a cool guitar tone and techno like percussion. "Chrome Balaclava" is another a cappella track with several voices harmonizing wordless utterings while an intermittent shaky thing adds a little percussion. "All Is Not Self" is probably the most out-of-place sounding track on SUPERVILLAIN OUTCAST. This one sounds like a big beat techno track with vocals that reminds me of Richard Butler from The Psychedelic Furs! The electro-beat is heavy with background vocals providing ghostly haunting sounds. The fury returns on the next track and then another a cappella type shorty with "Cellar Door."

SUPERVILLAIN OUTCAST is an outstanding album for many reasons. Firstly it is the pinnacle of the avant-garde industrial black metal sound that DØDHEIMSGARD had been perfecting and all the new musicians pull if off beautifully. Secondly the production is also perfect as every little sound is allowed space to be heard and the instruments have their own role within a larger context that create a complete band sound. Another successful strategy is the focus on the extreme avant-garde metal with little serene fillers that punctuate the frenetic nature of the album and to top it off the compositions are just perfectly catchy with super aggressive hooks and electronic embellishments to add layers of counterpoint creating a mesmerizing contrast with the dominant guitar riff focus. The black metal is perfectly balanced with the industrial and the avant-garde is used as a supplement instead of getting into territory too strange for the uninitiated listener. Personally this is one of those albums that made a huge impact the first time i ever heard it and still holds up after many listens. What could you call this? I'm not sure but think Ulver's first album mixed with some Ministry and maybe even some Prodigy and you're getting close.

Dødheimsgard had offered up industrialised black metal on 666 International, went dark for a good number of years, and then re-emerged offering blackened industrial metal on Supervillain Outcast. Now, after another long break, the project has offered up A Umbra Omega, which sees Vicotnik and his new lineup taking Dødheimsgard back out of the industrial realm altogether to produce an album which retains a black metal foundation but gets extremely weird with it. With proggy synthesisers, jazzy brass sections, and a vocal performance from Aldrahn with a theatrical, eccentric delivery that puts me in mind of the sort of thing Devil Doll get up to, A Umbra Omega represents an avant-black puzzlebox which will reward patient listeners.

For my 666th review! Sorry Aphrodite's Child :)

This is where things really got weird for DØDHEIMSGARD. After two second wave black metal by the numbers albums they shifted gears and released their transitional EP "Satanic Art" which still found the band firmly in black metal territory but also added the additional elements of industrial metal which signaled an abrupt change in their sound within the ever growing newbies in the second wave black metal cult. The risk paid off and it proved to be a sound that not only set them apart from the pack but packed a punch of industrial black metal fury. On 666 INTERNATIONAL the band continued this newly discovered niche and developed it even further. Other black metal bands had sampled with industrial and electronica such as Ulver who would go this route as well but abandoned the black metal aspects altogether in favor of the sonic possibilities of synthesized sounds. Also on board was fellow Norwegians Arcturus who developed their own style of space metal but it was DØDHEIMSGARD that kept the adrenaline, punk attitude and ferocity of the second wave of black metal in tact.

The album begins innocently enough with a piano tinkling away but after a mere second becomes accompanied by blastbeats and guitar riff fury for a few measures and then totally changes into a Nine Inch Nails industrial rock sound soon to be joined by Aldrahn's clean Skinny Puppy type vocals. The electro rock style plays on for a while and it becomes easy to forget that this is a metal album at all until about seven minutes in when the black metal kicks back in only instead of blastbeats we get some simple industrial drumbeats and background vocal "hoys" that remind me of AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." Such is the sound of the new DØDHEIMSGARD, a veritable smorgasbord of electro rock, industrial metal and still enough black metal on board to please any of the skeptics. As the album giddily trots in the avant-garde pastures there are many other styles that make their way into the mix. While the main percussive gist falls into the industrial metal realm with black metal blastbeats interpolating themselves sporadically and intermittently, it is the black metal that dominates the guitars and bass but they often drop out all together and are replaced by softer dreamier jangled passages as well seemingly in battle with industrial electronica and

The album is generally very frantic but there are also totally out of place instrumentals that add contrasting styles to the mix. "Carpet Bombing" is simply a jazz piano piece that instils a spooky vibe with slightly dissonant notes slowly lulling the listener into a sudden serene state before "Regno Potiti" jumps back into black industrial franticness once again followed by the similar "Final Conquest." Next up another piano ballad with "Logic." Not jazzy but more classical lasting a mere minute before "Sonar Bliss" ferociously bombards the senses with full jangly dissonant black metal riffs and speed-of-light blastbeat percussion. After dominance is well established it seems to have a break down of style and become some oddly timed progressive industrial workout with jangly arpeggios churning out strange time signatures, angular rhythms and tempo freak outs. There are periodic passages where the keyboard dominates with wild and innovative timbres that add a whole new layer to the avant-garde feel of 666 INTERNATIONAL.

While the theme is purported to be of science fiction, i can't really find any rhyme or reason to the whole thing. This is a true trip down the avant-garde rabbit hole which could possibly be the soundtrack for a Salvador Dalí painting as random sounds callathump rhythmically ahead taking turns bleating out their unexpected matchings of percussion, distortions and vocal styles. I would probably characterize 666 INTERNATIONAL more in the industrial metal field than black at this point. There is a lot of attention paid to an industrial feel even when black metal bursts on to the scene. Aldrahn's vocals remind me most of Nivek Ogre from Skinny Puppy whose tortured painful screams of anguish punctuate the cacophonous din and electronically imbued atmosphere. Overall, this is one weird album but a kind of weird that i love! Personally i prefer the following "Supervillain Outcast" because of the better bringing to order of all of the elements but 666 INTERNATIONAL is still one sick wild ride! I dig the entire scene with the exception of the lame use of silent tracks at the end. Tracks 10 through 65 are pure silence averaging about ten seconds each and then at track 66 we get a rather unnecessary and uninteresting bonus track followed by a psytrance beat with blackened Skinny Puppy type vocals. End the album at track 9 and all is good.

'A Umbra Omega' - Dodheimsgard (86/100)

I think it's difficult nowadays to appreciate just how far Dodheimsgard took black metal at the end of the 1990s. 666 International's bold push to twist the sound with industrial interference and jazz-based intuition did for black metal what Atheist's Unquestionable Presence did for its death metal counterpart several years prior. Of course, by the time we're at now, black metal is practically old enough as a genre to have settled down, possibly had kids, and otherwise aged enough to have seen each one of its potential permutations realized into some shape or form. When it's become relatively 'normal' to hear bands constantly pushing the boundaries, it's woefully easy to forget there was once a time things of an experimental nature were major risks to take in a scene that took pride in its own obscurity.

All things considered, Dodheimsgard's been pretty quiet in the years since they changed the game. Supervillain Outcast dropped eight years later in 2007, and it's now been seven years since that. The sheer rarity of their output makes A Umbra Omega feel that much more like a cherished event; there would be few other circumstances I'd be openly embrace a 70 minute metal album without reservations. The major waiting period makes it so that it would seem inappropriate to call this latest DHG opus a real follow-up to their past material; nonetheless, there were things I'd expect from any new work of theirs. No Dodheimsgard record could be complete without taunting the listener's sanity to some forsaken degree, and a consistent standard of musicianship far beyond the par of their contemporaries would be virtually a granted fact. To call A Umbra Omega DHG's finest album may be tempting exaggeration, but the fact that I want to go out and say that should be testament to the album's jaw-dropping creativity. I'll say this much for it: where on past albums not all of Dodheimsgard's experiments succeeded unanimously, A Umbra Omega is consistently dazzling the entire way through.

Though still unmistakably black metal, never has the line between that and the avant-garde felt so blurred with Dodheimsgard. Following the project's time silent, a renewed grasp of style abounds, and it may be easiest to loosely define what DHG are doing here as progressive extreme metal. Even the vocals-- provided here by Aldrahn from the band's heyday-- are conceivably alien to blackened norms. The screeching guitar parts are as atonal as ever, the drums laced with off-kilter jazz repertoire, and atop all of this Aldrahn delivers one of the most compelling and strange vocal performances I have heard on a metal record. His snarling, dissonant sprechgesang often resembles the maddening cadence of a carnival announcer. The instrumentation never lets up its pace to make way for the vocals, and I don't think a more traditional vocal performance would have held up against DHG's technical chops, for here they are punishing, mind-bending and unrelenting in their calculated depravity.

It's par for the course for an avant-garde metal band to throw every possible style and idea into the pot for an eclectic mess as part of their musical statement. Dodheimsgard aren't beyond these playfully unexpected detours, but what most distinguishes this from their past albums is the fact that they've managed to congeal it into something that sounds tight and coherent. You'll hear a lot of memorable one-shot passages throughout the album's hour-plus, but it never sounds like DHG are straying from the course. As to how the band have managed to get this impression across, I'm not completely sure. If I had to guess, I'd say they grasped a handful of the most insane and off-hand traits in their arsenal (the swirling riffs, jazzy drums and theatrical vocals among them) and had confidence enough in their core sound to carry it throughout the album's length.

That A Umbra Omega has such a strong center makes the said detours all the more engaging when they do happen. While the glitchy industrial intro "The Love Divine" is an obvious write-off in this regard, every following piece (averaging around the 12 minute mark) offers at least a few of these each, and they're almost all individually memorable. Of these, "Aphelion Void" offers up some of the best at the album's start, particularly a slow-building, electronics-based passage about 8 minutes into the piece. Arguably my favourite moment in the entirety of A Umbra Omega encompasses the last two minutes of "God Protocol Axiom", where a tense and otherwise atonal composition erupts into a beautifully heart-wrenching, actually melodic climax. Shortly after, of course, DHG are back to their standard tricks, and despite the album's length, their go-to techniques of controlled chaos and quasi-operatic pomp never lose their stopping power.

For an avant-garde album that hinges primarily on a single sound and madness-inducing tone, A Umbra Omega really does feel consistently engaging and fascinating. The album's length and its predilection for daunting track lengths doesn't make it such an easy listen even for the long-since initiated, but once I start listening to the album, it's tough to put down. I'm sure A Umbra Omega could have said just as much in less time, but considering we haven't heard anything from this legendary band in so long, I could never complain about DHG eating up more of a compact disc's space than most ever attempt. As always, A Umbra Omega isn't for the faint of heart, but then again, Dodheimsgard have only ever catered to an adventurous sort of listener. Even if it could never bear the historical gamechanging significance of 666 International, I'm not afraid to say this band has set a new standard for themselves with this one.