Review by Sonny for Andavald - Undir Skyggðarhaldi (2019)

Andavald are another band to hail from Iceland's burgeoning dissonant black metal scene. This five-track album is book-ended by a couple of unsettling piano-led instrumental pieces, the meat of the album being three tracks lasting a bit over thirty minutes of well-written black metal. The album's slightly uneasy atmosphere isn't merely down to the dissonance employed on the tracks, but also the pacing which is, in the main, much slower than is usual for black metal. I really like the album's overall effect and prefer it to quite a few of it's more illustrious counterparts.