A lot of metal albums work best while sitting alone with all the lights off, but Svart’s latest offering seems more appropriately enjoyed while walking the streets late at night, letting the music convey the loneliness, emptiness and futility of the world around you. Förlorad basically picks up where old school Katatonia and Forgotten Tomb left off, its wailing tones both viscerally depressive and yet strangely familiar. The album is only three tracks but runs an imposing 74 minutes, with the first track clocking in at 14 minutes and the mammoth final track occupying just under 40 minutes of playing time. But despite its length, Förlorad never gets dull; instead I almost found myself wishing that each immersive soundscape on the album wouldn’t end. Such is the effectiveness of the building and swelling songwriting and the palpable atmosphere of despair that Svart’s music creates.

While the tracks are fairly distinct, all three share a very sparse, minimalist approach, allowing simple riffs and melodies to blossom slowly while Draug lays on the atmosphere in the form of ghostly vocals, wailing keyboards and some tasteful samples. The guitars weave subtle melodies and the drums provide dirge-like rhythms, with everything utterly drenched in reverb. While the first and third tracks stick to clean-toned guitars and understated spoken vocals, calling ‘Förlorad II’ “heavy” would be a definite understatement. It’s the only track on the album that features any kind of distorted guitar or power chords, but the deep, utterly massive guitar sound more than compensates for the quieter approach on the other tracks. Draug also breaks out a potent mixture of gut-wrenching death growls and more traditional black metal screams to give the album’s middle track an utterly sinister, enveloping sound that you won’t soon forget.

By now you’ve probably figured out that I absolutely loved this album. Svart has managed to distill the essence of depressive black metal into something that - while maybe not completely new and unique - is certainly different from the genre’s conventional sound. The extensive use of clean guitars and the contrast between the middle track and the others that surround it are what really sets this album apart. It’s hard to call an album as suffocating as this one ‘a breath of fresh air,’ but after listening to countless albums of basically the same minor chords and screaming, it’s refreshing to hear something like this.

» Buy ‘Förlorad II’ from Ominous Domain