The idea to invite the ghost into my tiny apartment came from out of nowhere, yet with deadly consequence. I prefer spectres and spirits to common folk, at least as long they have manners. The ghost called BERGRAVEN came to me like the echo from a time before our time, actually I didn’t see him enter through the door, I just heard strange abysmal sounds and suddenly this vague thin figure sat on my couch, staring at me with piercing eyes and a facial expression that I couldn’t describe else than it made me shiver immediately… nevertheless I felt drawn towards this creature which resembled a skeleton with its seemingly vellum-bound bones, so I sat vis-à-vis, noticing my own bones creaking and mocking me.
To tell you what happened that late evening – sorry, at this point I have to disappoint you. All I can remember is this irrational atmosphere in which I felt caught and unable to move or to grasp a clear thought. I wouldn’t tend to say that the being was unfriendly, but I remember it to talk to me with a voice transporting a nameless mixture of pain, anger, hysteria and presentiment of death that I couldn’t do anything than just sitting there and feeling abandoned and helpless – and, shameful enough, still fascinated. Was it death in person? Or was it maybe many a death in a single person, each growling, screaming or swearing with different voices? What sinister melodies surrounded this entity? Why had every single tone such a frightening undertone? Were that songs I was listening to or mere reflections of those echoes that I must had dreamed of before? Was my mind starting to freak out whilst remembering fragments of reviews on a certain record from this ghostlike Swedish musician? Was it because I missed the word “handmade” in those writings?
Without doubt every sound surrounding the entity of BERGRAVEN is handmade, although those hands might have been led by death and the devil themselves when they created “Till Makabert Väsen”, the artist’s third album which seems to have been construcdead in the twilight zone between life and afterlife. Maybe that’s why I had the impression that every time, I turned my eyes from the visitor, he started smiling at me, knowing that I would make only a fool of myself when trying to guide mortal men into his non-euphonious realm by writing those lines you read this very moment. But then again – when I glanced at him – his face was motionless as before. Was it really?
Be it as it is: if you don’t invite the spectre into your own rooms, you’ll never know what I write about regardless how often you let your eyes wander about these lines, and regardless as well how often you listen to single excerpts from this musical drama macabre which transcends post black metal much more than the already recommended predecessor “Dödsvisioner”. This is much more beyond the border and provokes the cliché of madness and genius being neighbours in the mind of gifted artists. To give you a hint: when the bony creature had left the living-room, a vague sense of irritation survived for days and thus I didn’t dare to listen to “common” music until I had journalized this strange attendance. It is not likely that I will become bored by visitations like that in the near future, although a guy called Pär once expressed that idea whilst being interrogated by aVoid for this magazine. So boredom is not to fear. But why do I still shiver?
-Thor Joakimsson
VITALS:
Release: June 2009
Label: Hydra Head Records
Avantgenre: Surreal Dark Metal
Duration: 53:03
Origin: Sweden
Official site: http://myspace.com/bergraven
Review online since: 16.12.2009 / 13:35:14
| TRACKLIST:
01 – Drömmen Om Undergång |
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