WRITTEN IN WATERS

Undoubtfully, it requires an amazing dose of skill to capture the gloomy and perverse atmosphere of black metal without needing to appeal to the incessant brutality of thunderous blast beats, tundra-cold power chords, and barely audible demonic shrieks. To achieve this, VED BUENS ENDE ventures further beyond any contemporary extreme metal act of theirs, into territories of technical innovativeness both rhythmical and melodically to achieve a mesmerizing atmosphere...

of seduction, or better yet, of confinement. WRITTEN IN WATERS is murky, unhopeful and quite ethereal. Rather than visiting a dreamy sphere of fantasy, VED BUENS ENDE traps un in darker plains, to the lands where the cruel lord inhabits, where magic is wicked, the skies are always pitch-black haze and the breezes always blow unpleasantly cold and uninviting. The trees, withered, the lake where the swans swim, polluted, the dwellers, always with vicious smirks and ill intentions. In fact, WRITTEN IN WATERS' cover conveys a lot of the emotional concept within the album; of a twisted, doomed alternate dimension. Such spectacular world-build is perhaps VED BUENS ENDE's paramount achievement with their debut.

Many factors were significant for such achievement. We have the guitar riffs, with their distortion and muffed reverb but also careful structures not to sound sloppy. One may also cite the rhythm, competently leading the songs and their moods, always peppered with fluid drum fills and lots, LOTS of cymbals. Certainly, the clear vocals, beautifully sung but, audibly, concealing vile second thoughts (perfectly resembling an exquisite villain such as a classy vampire), alternating with the sporadic but spine-chilling ghastly shrieks (prominent in Den Saakaldte) offer a lot to the atmosphere. Even the lyrics, with their cryptic abstraction and suspicious naughtiness implied, are important factors to VED BUENS' twistedly built world.

This album is not brutal. It does not permeate anger, violence, cruelty, antisociality. It is not, either, cold, distant, emotionlessly efficient. It is not like a snowy Norwegian forest. It is a thoroughly supernatural, vividly bleak and incessantly innovative trip. It manages to be extreme metal, to be atmospheric black metal, without tackling the many characteristics that make black metal, well, black metal. Taking a detour, thinking out of the box, VED BUENS ENDE is a truly progressive extreme metal act which, even though wasn't able to emerge from obscurity, is highly recommended for people who are seeking creative metal acts, or maybe just experiencing finely-crafted atmospheric black metal with very little demonstrations of aggressivity.

"Leave. Leave... the misery of the swans, the sand smothered on our chests... was music choir..."

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