Naglfar - Vittra (1995)^{Release ID: 9266}

A very competent continuation of Dissection's work that's just a bit monotonous for classic status.

Naglfar have never really received a lot of attention, despite releasing multiple decent melodic black metal albums. I think the main reason for this is that the band have never really produced anything particularly original, creating slight variations of what Dissection had already produced earlier. All that said, they were certainly one of the earliest bands to follow in the aforementioned Swedish legends footsteps, and their debut release Vittra is considered by many to be their very best piece of work. I'm certainly not going to argue with that judgement as it is most definitely an entertaining and at times beautiful album, but there is something slightly missing from Vittra that would take it to the next level for me.

All the ingredients are there for a classic. Numerous great and very melodic black metal riffs, light touches of keyboards that effectively add atmosphere and depth, perfectly venomous, raspy screaming black vocals and relentless, powerful drumming. But despite how good all of this sounds, Vittra just gets a bit...well, boring after a while. It's hard to put my finger on why the album tends to pass me by while only occasionally demanding attention. Most of these tracks on their own make for entertaining experiences, but overall, the album just isn't very memorable. All I can put it down to is that things start to become monotonous after about 3 tracks. Jens' vocal style repeats similar patterns repeatedly, the previously mentioned tasty melodic riffs all tend to seep into each other and the drumming doesn't do anything to stand out, taking the most efficient and least interesting route from A to B. I guess it's just one of those albums that you'll completely love or just not hugely connect with, but I'm not sure any fan of melodic black metal could really hate it.

Despite my obvious struggles with Vittra, I'm still going to rate the album well and I have every intention of giving it a few more spins to see if I can make that connection that has so far evaded me. When I force myself to concentrate on what's going on, it's almost always decent, and at no stage can I consider any track to be a failure. For this reason alone, I have no hesitation in recommending fans of Dissection give this album a listen or two and will give it 3.5 stars for now.