Vordr - I (2004)

When listening to Vordr, you'd have a hard time believing that they were formed in 2003. These Finns play raw-as-fuck punk-ish old school black metal akin to Von, Darkthrone or, most obviously, Ild-fucking-jarn.

The production manages to keep each instrument discernable, while having an overall ancient, cavernous rawness. Composition-wise, it consists mostly of short (around 2 minutes) tracks, with the odd 4-5 miuntes tracks that are mid-paced, Burzum-inspired numbers. These short lengths work to the album's advantage, as no song overstays it's welcome.

The riffs are fucking simplistic and have that great, evil second-wave fuzz, but they never become too repetitive or tiring. Even though you may not be able to tell most of the songs apart, variety isn't a stranger here, especially if you know a thing or two about early '90s Norwegian Black Metal. The drumming is equally simplistic and Burzum-ish. Double bass and blast beats are lacking, though the drummer knows when to pick up the pace in a punk-ish manner.

So, it has the raw black metal aesthethics nailed, but what about the spirit? Well, Vordr sport a kind of Ildjarn-like nature-admiring misanthropy, wishing nothing but death for modern man and all of his contraptions. With schizoid, "Aske"-ish screams to support it! This minimalist, hateful, sylvan theme permeates the album through and through, from the cold, isolated artwork down to the song titles, such as "Rhythm Of The Storms" or "Fertile Human Waste". All in all, I guess I can imagine these guys living in a cabin somewhere in the woods, splitting logs with nothing but their unadultered distaste for humankind, wearing lumberjack shirts, sitting on their porch with a couple of beers, blunts, and hand-made crossbows on their laps, to protect their property from intruders. They're the kind of manly men that hunt deer by repeatedly bludgeoning them to death with their erect phalluses, while humming "Forest Poetry" and mentally sketching a couple more paragraphs for their "Unabomber"-like manifestos. And that's always something welcome!

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-Radu