The pioneers of thall, people. The band that invented a new sound and coined the term, a decade in and revolutionising modern metal once again with a new record. Their innovative sound in the subgenre, that some like to call super-djent, has returned as an seventeen-track mammoth of an album experience.
For me, this was my first taste of thall, and I'm glad to have heard it from the best in the subgenre. Vildhjarta has a brilliant array of innovative metal writing that transcends any other metal subgenre by miles. The closest subgenre is djent, it's true, but even that gap is wide.
Thall is still a fresh and new sound for me, as well as a majority of modern metal listeners. Thall has a strong focus on ambient layers, odd rhythms and polymeters, extremely low tunings, interesting dissonant choices, unconventional use of bends and slides, seemingly chaotic soundscapes and emotive direction. It's subversive, intentionally uncomfortable and strangely captivating.
There's not much to tell apart the individual tracks, especially with how little repeating motifs there are to identify each track. I had to spin the record many, many times before I could finally start putting a finger on which track had which moment. It doesn't help that I don't speak Swedish, so I can't pick apart tracks by their lyrics either. That aside, a minor hurdle in differentiating tracks won't take away much from the overall experience.
It's a wildly technical endeavour densely scattered throughout this record. Every song has its own complicated run of both guitar and drum parts that already sound difficult, and definitely will be more than difficult to play. I have no clue how they get through a single song, much less the whole record. It feels like every 10 seconds they spin a wheel and decide to either change the tempo, throw in a polyrhythm, change the time signature or do it all at once. The technicality is so through the roof that I sometimes forget to pay attention to the vocals, which are ruthless by the way.
I can't pinpoint what's so interesting about this record. It feels like a combination of innovative techniques, unconventional choices and subversive moments that make the whole record a brilliant work of art. The haunting soundscapes and unnerving rhythms are weirdly elegant, and a majority of the record consistently juxtaposes beautiful ambience next to jarring heavy riffage. A lot of what makes this record so special has a flair to it no other record has, and I'm willing to look past the gripe I have with the songs being hard to tell apart.
Vildhjarta will be a historical landmark of modern metal, whether you like it or not. What they are doing with this record and their discography as a whole is definitely going to lead a new wave of sound in the next few years. I'm already seeing essences of thall in bigger bands' newer releases, like ERRA's Sol Absentia and Invent Animate's Shade Astray, and I'm excited to see the rest of the modern metal scene start to incorporate this style that Vildhjarta pioneered. måsstaden under vatten is a special record for metal music, there is no doubt about it.
Rating: 9/10