Vehemency Although the ground of forest-inspired, atmospheric black metal is quite indundated with a plethora of bands following the footstepts of e.g. Drudkh, Skogen offers a rather decent effort in the form of ”Vittra”, their debut full-length album. Despite the generic band name - Swedish for ”forest” - the band does have more interesting ideas to present here than the name implies, altough do not expect anything unforeseen.

The songs base on mid-paced tempo, melancholic and somewhat folkish guitar melodies, and a very bassy, professional production. The crystal clear sound in the drum department is something I’m not so fond of, but it is bearable since the focus is on the overall brooding atmosphere. There’s also some minimal use of synths, and also some acoustic guitars between the black metal segments. Acoustic passages are most clearly presented on the interludes ”Höst” and ”Skymning” that are both very reminiscent of Agalloch’s folk material. On the metal songs, I can not deny the closeness to Drudkh in songs like ”Ur Mörkret Hon Kommer”, but luckily this is the only song with perhaps too clear connections to the aforementioned band.

”Vittra” has one big glitch that is too common for recent black metal records: it runs for too long. The album loses its focus towards the end of the 60-minute giant and even the interludes aren’t enough to keep it sounding fresh. The best moments of ”Vittra” are located at the very beginning of the album where such innovative compositions as ”Dimfärd” reside. Vocals that vary from higher to lower growls - there’s also some clean verses as on the epic ”Skuggorna Kallar” - are a nice element, though. All in all, ”Vittra” is a pleasant record but it relies on too safe tricks. Surely, Skogen evokes a nice forest atmosphere on this album, but what makes it different, or more importanly, really better than some of its predecessors? I fail to answer that.