Album review: Vreid – The Skies Turn Black

Walking through darkness doesn’t guarantee there’ll be bright lights at the end. One thing you can be certain of though: if you stay put, there’s no hope whatever. After decades of making eloquent though predictable enough black metal, Norwegian collective Vreid found themselves five years clear of their last release and with nothing in the tank. Rather than bemoaning their fate, they simply allowed wild ideas – stuff they might once have smiled at and moved on from – to manifest. The result is The Skies Turn Black, a 10th album that is in some ways a first.

From the get-go, this is a record of immense scope, both crushingly heavy and beautifully melodic, both disconcertingly weird and comfortingly familiar. Opener From These Woods is all these things, and best of all, Vreid have placed their own stamp upon it. You can almost breathe in the lung-freezing air of their native landscape.

Kraken, their theme music to the monster movie of the same name, is just an intermission before Loving The Dead wanders into places the Vreid of old would have feared to tread. Featuring a magnetic performance from Djerv singer Agnete Kjølsrud, the shortened take featured in the video is startling enough, and not simply because we see rather too much of a near-naked Chris 'Party Boy' Pontius from Jackass. The longer, eight-minute album version is even more immersive, not outstaying its welcome.

Elsewhere, the title-track is a suitably heavy memorial to Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s iconic Back To The Beginning concert, while Chaos tips the hat to Metallica with some monstrously massed riff-building – yes, the sort that made Master Of Puppets one of the greatest metal albums ever released. It closes with The Earth Rumbles, less thrilling but a neat summary of the band’s vast repertoire. We don’t always know where we are, but we sure as hell like being here. Vreid, almost certainly, have their finest hour at hand.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: At The Gates, Metallica, Myrkur

The Skies Turn Black is released on March 6 via Indie