In the 30-plus years since Per Ohlin first donned corpse paint, black metal has mutated, evolved, and adapted to so many different environments and subcultures, it can feel like an invasive species set loose on a fertile world. In theory, this is strikingly rigid music—in the trad black metal that looks to Norway’s second wave, at least, there is no swing, there are no bent notes, and the emotional palette is as monochromatic as the album covers—but it’s proven itself to be surprisingly flexible. So when bands like Dimmu Borgir bring a full orchestra on stage, or Cradle of Filth collaborate with Ed Sheeran, there’s a strength in choosing to remain within the genre’s confines, playing trad black metal, and absolutely ripping shit up.
That’s precisely what Hulder, the eponymous project of the Belgian musician now living in the Pacific Northwest and her new bassist Necreon, set out to do. If you ignore the fact that her production is so warm and alive it nearly sounds like a Steve Albini record (and the fact that the person making this music is a woman), Verbolgen, the third Hulder record, could easily slot in alongside classic ’90s records like Satyricon’s Nemesis Divina and Immortal’s At the Heart of Winter. Even the album’s deviations—occasional acoustic fingerpicking, a bit of medieval cosplay, loads of ominous whooshing—are methods employed by black metal artists for decades to break up the monotony of their records. Verbolgen does not represent a dramatic step forward for the genre, nor is it likely to change the way you think about black metal. But it is one of the most expertly composed and thrillingly executed trad black metal records you’re likely to hear this year.
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Because of the genre’s stylistic limitations, trad black metal records run the risk of feeling samey; listening to all that tremolo picking and all those blastbeats can feel like watching a staticky TV for 45 minutes. Throughout Verbolgen, Hulder finds ways of shifting and kinking the sound without sacrificing intensity or losing momentum. Following the hammering of proper opener “The Crowning,” “Thy Binding Oath” seems to lurch forward at a slower, nearly dirgelike pace despite the agitated insistence of a very active kick drum. Halfway through the excellent “View From Nemeton,” Hulder turns the song around, replacing the death march of its first half with a grooving riff before ripping the song apart with dizzy dueling guitar solos, while she splits “Den Nacht Zijn Lied” with bejeweled death metal shredding that adds to the song’s sense of wounded triumph.
While Verbolgen never quite mopes its way into DSBM territory, a heavy air of melancholy pervades the record. The orange throb of a synth pulses at the center of closer “The Glow of Dawn” like a faint morning sun trying to push its way through the grime of an old window. It’s a lonesome, alienated sound, powerless in the face of all that noise, but voicing itself anyway. Flutes and acoustic guitars wrap around “In Blood and in Earth,” setting the scene and making space for a snaking mellotron to climb its way up the main riff like vines up a turret. Maybe it’s something in the PNW rain, but were it not for the heavy distortion and double kick pedal, the song’s weird, lilting rhythm and downcast chord progression could feel something like an Elliott Smith song. The fire that crackles behind the hand drums and acoustic guitars of the album’s intro keeps burning in “The Crowning,” too, joining with a mournful flute in transforming a song that otherwise feels like a regal processional into something acrid and ugly. Forest spirits, field recordings of fire, medieval instrumentation—taking these signifiers at face value can be challenging, particularly for someone not yet invested in the way metal uses fantasy as a means of expressing everyday sadness. Verbolgen doesn’t succeed in spite of this stuff. Instead, it invests all of black metal’s well-worn tropes with enough commitment and conviction to make the music feel as rich and alive as freshly drawn blood.
