Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Shining (SWE) - V - Halmstad (2007)

By far one of the cleverest records ever written in the realms of black metal (and this is so much more than just a black metal album, with the genre only really being present as a sniff here and there), V-Halmstad is textured both on an emotional and instrumentation level, intriguing in the darkest sense of morbid curiosity you could muster and constantly exudes class.

Whenever I hear that an album is "depressive bm" I think of lo-fi production values and repetitive and (all too often sadly) monotonous tracks.  The impending sense of desolation often being replaced by a habit of hitting the skip button as records fail to deliver the true emotional value of the subject matter that they promise.  The smart thing about this record is that it approaches the depressive elements from a very much real-world view of how the illness manifests and distorts experiences that don't always start out as being that despondent in nature.

For large parts of the record there are pounding rhythms and a thumping pace, sultry lead work that is reminiscent of Judas Priest, almost progressive lead work, hell, there's even hooks on here.  Yet at the same time there's forehead to dashboard style lunges on the brakes that allow this suffocating veil of dejection to smother the mood.  Spoken word sections creep in over ethereal passages of dark and yet wonderfully melodic music, with harrowing words of misery, despair and hopelessness that cause the breath to catch in your throat.  What Kvarforth has done here is manage to weave depression into the songs in a purely organic manner.  His experiences of mental health illness are on display on all six of these tracks.

Bizarrely, the album comes off in more than one place as being the darkest of cabaret; in its more slow-paced and melodic moments almost like some soundtrack to a gritty Scandinavian police drama.  But when the riffs let rip there's real power behind them (helped in no small part by the superb production job), you can hear the rumbles and the runs of the bass clearly and the demented, shrieking vocals of Kvarforth range from outbursts of maniacal utterings to grim statements of the blackest truths.   My only criticism of the record is that at times his vocal style borders on comical (once or twice).  Beyond that this a creative masterpiece, laden with the heaviest of emotions and full of sullen meanderings.