Review by Vinny for Veilburner - Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy (2025)

Veilburner seem to occupy the same rarified atmosphere within which I would normally encounter Blut Aus Nord, Dødheimsgard, Deathspell Omega or even Oranssi Pazuzu. They are distantly rooted in black metal yet at the same time are multiple football fields away from the genre. On the death metal side of things there are comparisons I could draw with Akercocke and Portal, which are fine benchmarks to be scored against. With this being my first ever listen to the band, my early impression was that this was not a duo that was with or indeed without their own sound or style. The mish mash of influences that had leapt out at me from what at the time of typing this had been just four tracks was intriguing to say the least. Yet, whereas on other, more avant garde releases I would have either hit the skip button multiple times or simply switched off altogether, there was something that kept me in the room with Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy.

Now, it could have been that after consecutive days of listening to conventional black metal, I was just more open to something different. Those dissonant tremolos certainly made short work of the seconds as they danced chillingly along my nerve-endings, whilst those squally riffs seemed to rapidly grow a horrifying backdrop of noise for the more extrovert elements to sit atop of. Yet for all the individual elements that are in play at any given time, I have found it very easy to plot my way through the tracks as they pounce on me. There is also enough memorability to them to permit me to understand them as isolated pieces as opposed to the album becoming just one chaotic glut of noise. A more critical listen leads to me to think the reason for this is that the tracks themselves have very clear points of progression. This is perhaps too hard for me to explain in words for some readers, but riffs have a clear start and end to them. Sounds odd I know, yet this element of closure gives me traceability across what could otherwise soon become a disorientating affair.

This succinctness that sits behind the dissonant and transcendental apparitions that are conjured by the rest of the music acts as an anchor almost. I feel that because of it, I can truly pay attention to all the album much better. As a fan of BAN, Deathspell Omega and Oranssi Pazuzu already, there are elements here, such as the vocals, that are not offering anything new most certainly. The admiration comes for the crafting involved in putting all eight of these tracks together. Thematically exploring trauma, death, infinite reincarnation and the desperate futility of lives that make the same mistakes and meet the same end, this is not the most cheerful of subject matters to be committing to tape. Such ideas remind me very much of Akhlys, who are one of my favourite artists over several releases now.

Yet, the more I listen to the album the more I find it veering away from pretty much all the territory I have called it out for inhabiting already. The rich lead work of ‘Ouroboreal Whorl’ and ‘Matter o’ the Most Awful of Martyrs’ have an almost post-metal level of clarity to them, for example. There is a seemingly purpose-built level of tameness to the record that only reaches the surface with repeated listens, and I find that remarkable for such a challenging piece of music, yet I have already called out the concise nature of part of the album already. Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy is the perfect album title for the work on display here. The record is a triumph yet achieves this with no loss of that sense of stinking human tragedy.