Reviews list for Svartsyn (SWE) - Vortex of the Destroyer (2025)

If I had my time again, I would start listening to black metal a lot sooner than I did. The peak of the scene was around the time when I was just turning into a teenager and there was no mention whatsoever of black metal amongst my metalhead mates at the time. We were all about death metal, thrash metal and heavy metal and I cannot recall the likes of Burzum, Mayhem, Emperor or Satyricon ever entering conversation even, across five years of high school. As such, I have always felt like I have missed out on the true essence of black metal, my initial, stronger, affiliation with death metal being largely because I was watching it grow in front of my very eyes. Whilst I have many memorable experiences listening to black metal in my adult years, some of the same emotions that I feel when listening to say De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, can never be the same as when I listen to Slowly We Rot. I guess then, that when I am looking for the ultimate experience of black metal when I get to a new release or one that I have not heard despite it being available for years, is that sense of true passion and excitement for the art that I feel I missed out on back in the day. Albums like the latest by Svartsyn.

It is all here for the taking for me. Themes of Satanism, death, ritualistic offerings and dark mythology are what help pique my interest on most metal records. When they are as well integrated into a wall of crawling, lumbering, threatening and menacing black metal music such as Vortex of the Destroyer, then this is the icing on the cake. Ornias sounds genuinely deranged on here, his vocals are as pestilent as the vilest of diseases, his riffs are relentless sorties of marauding layers of darkness hammered home by guest drummer Ignace Verstrate’s (the aptly nicknamed Hammerman) unabating pounding on the skins. It is the dead body the kids find out by the lake one day. Bloated with filth, hissing noxious gases from its orifices, its flesh infested with all manner of crawling things. If you need a quick teaser of VotD at its best, throw on the amazing ‘Utter Northern Darkness’ and you will soon be met with the type of barrage of fury you can expect from pretty much all ten tracks on offer here.

Whilst I will accept that sometimes the mix does lose elements of the instruments, it is a black metal record after all, so production values are not always the order of the day, let’s be honest. Not even this though can hinder the majestic grimness of the album. Clearly written from a place of passion for the darkest of arts, VotD has enough black metal heart to keep me freezing cold for the whole of 2025 alone. It is not polished, it does not rely on atmospherics, and it yet has a sense of balance to its chaos. It has borders to its disorder. With hints of black ‘n roll here and there, the pacing of tracks always feels measured, despite the often-raging intensity. This will be a go to record for me for some time to come.