Reviews list for Glemsel - Forfader (2022)

It is refreshing when I come across an album in the realm of black metal that contains several tracks over the nine-minute mark that do not rely on atmospherics to shroud the delivery in some vast and dense soundscape. Forfader, the debut album from Danish bm band Glemsel, relies on pure repetition and driving tremolos and rhythm to get its point across. Look here and you will find no WITTR references or Darkspace-like distractions. Instead, we get treated to some traditional instrumentation such as the lyre (member of the lute family) and the oboe (double reed woodwind instrument) to flesh out the traditional bm fayre that the four-piece unleash here.

Featuring a sepia photograph of two ladies arranging some flowers from ye olde days as the cover artwork, there is little in the way of ornamental beauty present on Forfader’s six tracks. Where we do find brief moments of respite though there are hints of a less frantic approach to the music, dangled tentatively in front of us. Album intro track Arv immediately heralds the promise of some ethereal stringed enchantment, but it is in fact a deceitful start as the following three tracks make no effort to return to the more placid beginnings of the record.

By far the album’s most lengthy number, Det gamle må vige manages to avoid the epic edges of songwriting over its eleven-minute plus run time. After seven-and-a-half minutes of driving black metal, the slow picked strings tantalise the ears as the oboe gets some airtime before we are sucked back into tremolos and blastbeats galore for the remaining minute or so of the track. Whilst this track would make a good enough album closer, that task falls to the ten-and-a-half minutes of Ansigterne. An initially slower, more deviously evil track on which those grim and ghastly vocals really get their chance to shine, this track ends the whole experience by simply offering the exact same format as the previous tracks in the main.

Fair play to Glemsel for picking a direction and sticking with it. The inclusion of the more obscure instruments is restrained to mere moments and although their impact is noticed I find myself remembering more the consistent pace and tempos of the album overall. It is a strange album that somehow creates depth via the sheer will of its ever-present engine bearing down on the listener. A triumph of the tremolo over keys if ever I heard one.