Tilintetgjort - In Death I Shall Arise (2023)^{Release ID: 43787}

Tilintetgjort's brand of loose black metal first caught my ear back in March of this year when In Death I Shall Arise first dropped.  It was obvious to me from the outset that the millstone around the neck of the album was the production.  Whether a conscious decision or not to go with this demo-style of production, it is by far the most limiting and overall distracting element of the experience and is one decision (if consciously made) that would need rethinking the next time out.  This compressed sound creates some pretty odd clicking on the drums and adds a condensed layer over the guitars that sees them very much in the background of things, albeit they do not ever sound lost entirely.

However, I think there is enough else going on throughout In Death I Shall Arise to make it on of the more promising offerings of 2023 to date.  Me being on a Darkthrone in the past few months is no doubt what taught the AI on my streaming service to suggest Tilintetgjort as a potential like for me.  There is a lot of modern black metal on display here but it is more or less all delivered with tether firmly pegged back with Fenriz and Nocturno Culto sitting astride it.  At the same time, Tilintetgjort are trying to take an avant-garde direction at times - albeit they lack maturity, direction and an anywhere near decent enough production job to achieve it.  There are drum and riff patterns here that are not from any black metal playbook.  Whilst I would not go as far as to say they are successful forays every time, the intent is there even if the delivery is at times off.  With a better production, the flourishes of expansive structure and timings would land much better.  As it stands they are coming out of somersault and landing with too much weight pulling them onto their arse, instead of being able to have the freedom to land and arch their spine to balance the execution out in full.

I still applaud the effort, even though it is only a middle of the range number that I can hold aloft on my judging scorecard.  Give these guys a couple of years, a decent studio and a producer who isn't the vocalist in the band and they will be a different prospect.  Closing track Dommedagsmonument is where the real promise for future songwritng forays lies.  As bold a concept as it is at over twenty-minutes long, the ambition still shines through against the clashing of instruments in the mix.  I am watching this space.

My adventures into black metal have been suspiciously limited in recent months so thank goodness for a recent release feature in the North for this month. This is Tilintetgjort, a Nordic group and In Death I Shall Arise is the bands debut release. And the style of black metal on display is very traditional in its execution and delivery, which does unfortunately come with more than its share of issues for me. 

I have made it apparent before that the old school, 2nd wave black metal sound isn't really my cup of tea. Something about the stylings of a band like Darkthrone and Mayhem leave me with an empty feeling upon listening and a lot of that comes from the lack of variety and growth in storytelling that I always prefer. I much prefer the larger soundscapes of Emperor and the atmo-black of WitTR and Drudkh. Tilintetgjort are at a disadvantage right out of the gate as they employ a very condensed mix that sound like Burzum. The heavy bass presence with plenty of solo opportunities is nice and does take some of the attention away from the very muddy and frankly unenjoyable guitar timbre. And while the vocals are serviceable most of the time, I found on numerous occasions where the layering was peaking in the mix and it didn't seem like anyone noticed because they occur frequently and it became distracting from the performances.

The bass is doing a lot of this record heavy lifting because the guitars pack no punch in their riffage and they leave the album feeling like a demo than a professionally produced record. Maybe some of this is my background; not being a huge fan of this kind of production, while those who are more familiar with old school black metal will not mind it as much. For me, In Death I Shall Arise is a pretty underwhelming release as a whole, and as a black metal album, does not attempt to reinvent the wheel in any way. There are a couple of quasi-thrash metal passages that sound serviceable, but they seem more like throwaways than ideas to be developed on further releases.

Best Songs: Sannhetens søyler, Mercurial

I have to admit that I’d never heard of Norwegian black metal outfit Tilintetgjort prior to their brand new debut album “In Death I Shall Arise” being nominated as this month’s The North feature release so I had very little idea of what to expect going into it. Upon investigation I found that there are a couple of links to bands that I’m familiar with though. Bassist Sturt plays with symphonic black metallers Troll who I quite like while English drummer Sathan currently fills the role that legendary Mayhem skinsman Hellhammer used to fill in fellow Norwegian black metallers Den Saakaldte so the band members appear to have a bit of pedigree about them. After perusing a few reviews & other online resources it would seem that Tilintetgjort sit on the more avant-garde side of black metal though which isn’t always a space I like to play so I kept my wits about me going into my first listen to “In Death I Shall Arise” (which really should be the name of a death metal record in all honesty & the wonderfully deathly cover artwork only further enhances the chances of misleading your average consumer).

The first thing you’ll notice about “In Death I Shall Arise” is the unusual production job. I’m sure you’re all well accustomed to a raw, dirty & lo-fi recording style with Norwegian black metal by now but this one is a little different, even if it certainly sits comfortably under those terms. The mix has been afforded a lot of mid-range & the guitars sound very thin & fuzzy which leaves them struggling to compete with the rhythm section who dominate the mix, particularly the bass guitar of Sturt which seems to be the main focal point for the most part. This is especially noticeable when the guitarists go for higher register tremolo-picked melodies as there just doesn’t seem to be enough weight behind them which leaves them sounding weak, unintimidating & overly exposed. It’s a shame really as I think Tilintetgjort have left a bit of potential on the studio floor to be honest. Sturt on the other hand takes full advantage of his favourable position in the mix by showcasing some very inventive bass lines that create a lot of additional interest within some already quite expansive song structures.

It's interesting that I don’t find “In Death I Shall Arise” to be anywhere near as avant-garde as it’s made out to be at other online locations. To my ears, it’s not doing all that much that hasn’t been done before by forward-thinking Norwegians but it’s presented in a quirkier way that sees it standing out as something a bit different nonetheless. Tilintetgjort display a wide variety of home-grown influences from Darkthrone to Ved Buens Ende….. to Ulver to Arcturus but also dip into Celtic Frost waters at times. The blackened vocals of Svik are suitably grim & croaky but never lose intelligibility while guitarists Hazzlegard & Den Gamle offer a whole slew of interesting melodic ideas that once again have me reaching for that unusual term for extreme metal in “quirky”, a word that I have to admit I usually stay well away from in my metal music. Their harmonic counter-play sounds quite off-beat & unique at times. I also enjoy the occasional use of dissonance while the incorporation of some particularly Norwegian sounding acoustic guitar parts & clean Viking/folk vocals (that remind me of Garm from Ulver/Arcturus/Borknagar) is well executed, if not being something that I usually go for. There are some punky drum beats employed on occasion too which briefly takes things into similar territory to the niche subgenre of black ‘n’ roll.

The 46-minute tracklisting contains just the six tracks but is heavily weighted towards the epic 21-minute closer “Dommedagsvmonument” with the other five songs all finishing under the seven-minute mark. I enjoy all but one of the six with the overly quirky “Mercurial” being a bit of a struggle for someone with my taste profile. My clear highlight is unsurprisingly the shortest & most conventional of the six in the very Darkthrone-ish “Hex” which may not try anywhere near as much as the other material but succeeds emphatically in the area of simple & repetitive tremolo-picked riffage & evil, blasphemic black metal vocals. “Vinter og høst” is where you can most clearly see the influence of Ved Buens Ende….. & it saw me wishing that Tilintetgjort had explored that sound a little more to be honest. In saying that, “In Death I Shall Arise”  sees the band jumping around quite a bit from a stylistic point of view but still ends up sounding pretty cohesive which is a feather in the band's caps. It also sounds distinctly Norwegian which I’m sure isn’t a coincidence.

At the end of the day “In Death I Shall Arise” is more of an interesting record than it is one that I can see myself genuinely falling for. I like the ambition more than the reality & a lot of that comes down to taste but I feel that the production job has a lot to answer for too as I can’t deny the feeling that it’s reduced the impact of some of this material. Still… it’s nice to see a new band that can not only pay homage to their influences but also present a sound that presents them in a fresh new way.

This debut album from Oslo black metallers, Tilintetgjort, was an interesting listen to be sure and, in the main, it was one which I enjoyed. There is a great deal of variety within it's six tracks and the band seem determined not to plough a singular and uniform black metal furrow throughout it's runtime, but rather to explore a wider swathe of BM subgenres and not paint themselves into a metaphorical musical corner, with an almost punk-like, irreverent approach to black metal convention. In Death I Shall Arise feels like a shot in the arm for a genre which increasingly goes around like it's got a stick up it's arse with it's intense, experimental dissonance bullshit or the dreamy navel-gazing of modern blackgaze, where the single-minded "artistic vision" of bm protagonists is paramount over everything, including actually being enjoyable to listen to. Inevitably, this does comes with a degree of inconsistency as regards the songwriting, although the performances throughout are very good, but it is an approach I applaud. Apparently the bulk of the album was recorded live in the studio over a three day period in February of 2022, with a few overdubs added later, and I think this adds a looseness and a vibrancy to the sound that a more meticulous approach may have crushed out if it and it does feel like an actual band playing music rather than a bunch of technicians wielding the arsenal of recording tools now available to almost anyone with a laptop.

In Death I Shall Arise kicks off with an absolute belter, Kvikksølvdrømmer, the swirling guitar riffing and thunderous drum battery that define the track get the album off to a high-octane start then towards the latter part of the track displaying a punkish devilry when they drop into a Ramones-like riff that almost has you yelling "Gabba Gabba Hey" (in a cracked and devilish shriek, obviously). The second track, Sannhetens søyler, continues with a similar, latter-day Darkthrone, punkish vibe and a really catchy guitar melody which at times threatens to fall apart into dissonance, but never actually does, the overall effect kind of keeps you guessing as to where we are going here.

By the time third track, Mercurial, comes around, it is becoming clear that drummer, Englishman Tybalt (Daniel Theobald), is absolutely central to the material as he is all over it and is a veritable hurricane, blowing away all that stands before him in a flurry of blastbeats and fills that mark him as an incredible talent (to my untrained ear anyway). The basslines of four-string-wielder, Sturt (Jens B. Johansen) are also quite prominent at times, in a way similar to that which a number of the modern Chilean thrashers employ.

Vinter og høst is a track where Tilintetgjort employ a dissonant style that reminds me of tracks on early Ihsahn solo albums and this is followed by another short blaster, Hex, that comes over like a hybrid of Darkthrone and Deathspell Omega. Closing out the album is the twenty-minute epic, Dommedagsmonument (Doomsday Monument). This is quite an ambitious track with a three-part progressive structure that's really nice to hear, regaling us with a tale of cosmic mysticism and power. It's opening evil blasts give way to a Wardruna-like nordic folk section with clean vocals and acoustic guitar, that itself is overtaken by a more bombastic section with earnest-sounding cleans and impactful tremolo guitar work. Part three is a Darkthrone-esque section that I think sounds fantastic as the band really let loose with a black'n'roll riff from hell that illustrates the titular doomsday as Svik's demonic vocal reveals the cosmic visions of destruction. He has got a great line in evil, cracked shrieking that sounds demonically evil and his occasional cleans aren't too bad either.

Overall this is an album that I enjoyed immensely and, in truth, I keep getting more out of it the more I listen to it. The drumming is amazing, the guitar work is busy and propulsive and the vocals are classic-sounding, not dissimilar to Nocturno Culto's. I like the attempt at an ambitious approach that doesn't turn it's back on what makes black metal so great to begin with, but that uses the best of it within a progressive song structure. All-in-all I found this massively entertaining and look forward to where these guys go from here.