SLEGEST: Vidsyn (BLACK METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

If Vreid is a band that never really excited us, Slegest, the solo project of its former guitarist, knew on the contrary how to please us, from this "Løyndom" as icy as it is percussive, a clever mix of mineral Black Metal and sinister Doom, as if the last period Darkthrone was copulating with the original Black Sabbath. Three years later, the Norwegian is finally back with "Vidsyn". Is it a success again?

The defloration of this second puck proves that Ese has not given up on this coldly effective recipe, picking things up where he left off in 2013. In spite of the concerts that followed shortly afterwards, for which he gathered other human beings around him, Slegest remains alone, once again occupying all the posts, from the rough vocals to the rusty, sizzling guitars, not forgetting the drums anchored in the permafrost.

Carved with a chisel that gives it this sharp aspect, "Vidsyn" reassures from the start with an 'I Fortida Sitt Lys' with an implacable tempo that neither Fenriz nor Nocturno Culto would deny, with these polluted riffs looking like a scalpel dipped in the frozen water of a millennial fjord. Only a parsimonious female voice somewhat disturbs this known forest landscape that we are happy to find intact.

If 'Du' disappoints with its surprisingly melodic finery melted into a lazy mould, this is not the case for the rest of the menu, which sets a heavy reptilian rhythm with its rocky protrusions. Faithful to a sharp sound recording, the Scandinavian forges an art engulfed by winter, prisoner of a gloomy husk of despair. In fact, with the exception of a 'Wolf' swept away by a blizzard, "Vidsyn" is cast in lead, irrigated by these guitar lines, at once haunting look-outs cracking the mist ('Som I Eit Endelikt') and nocturnal drills digging the dark folds of a morbid forest ('Tenn Den Gamle Varde') which distil a funeral venom. Between crawling doom and black fed on the most stripped Thrash, the whole always gives the furious desire to stamp one's feet.

The surprise effect of the first album is followed by the confirmation that Slegest definitely has a great potential, in this vein already exploited with flying colors by his compatriot Sarke, typically Norwegian and a jubilant deposit of riffs reduced to their simplest expression, venomous and heady. - Official website

SLEGEST

VIDSYN

KARISMA RECORDS

BLACK METAL