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Wyrd Vargtimmen Pt. 1 For those of you who aren't sentient of Wyrd's background, let me shed some light on the area under question. The project was initially formed below the Hellkult name seven years ago by core element Nargath, and Kalma (who in the past played in Azaghal, an ardent Black Metal group). Three demos were recorded and a short while following Kalma's leaving, Nargath made a decision to go on by himself, but in a slight dissimilar approach and with a new moniker (or in other terms, the central Thrash Metal technique explored earlier was now giving room to an atmospheric shape of Black Metal with heathen, folkloric touches, beneath the banner of Wyrd). Following this short elucidation on Nargath's past doings, let us focus on Vargtimmen Pt. 1, the third Wyrd release on Solistitium (dwelling of the great Norwegian Isvind). As I previously stated above, the sound is largely full of atmosphere, with mid-paced drumming, melodious (but plain) riffs in the northern vein, ambient keyboard lines on the background (relatively buried) and covering it, those archetypal demonic (yet meek) vocal shrieks. The whole thing works pretty fine, seeing as the mood brought up by the melody walks alongside the lyrics (that are clearly individual chants to Nature and its unknown secrets, introducing Nargath's appeal to its absorbing soul (and those acoustic pieces that surge every so often do increase this feeling all the more). However, there are constantly negative points in all releases and in the case at hand, they are situated on the vocal changes (a bit illogical in places) and the rhythm's pick in certain drum patterns is less than remarkable, providing the dynamics' flow with a share of nauseating instants. But come what may, credit must be given to production duties, as the whole work done on Vargtimmen Pt. 1 is convincingly superior, in particular for this sort of sonority. Four tracks lasting nearly fifty minutes is rather atypical to find in such an album and even harder to put together the sound interesting as a whole, while at the same time grabbing your interest. Almost useless to say, Wyrd accomplished something in this quest, even if there's still work ahead to unearth a niche to its own. www.vargtimmen.cjb.net © 2003 The Lodge

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