When Terje Bakken, better known as Valfar, passed away in 2004, one of the most significant bands in black metal passed with him. The remaining members of Windir went their separate ways, forming a number of different groups, and Vreid was one of them. As you might have guessed by the title, they’ve now released five studio albums, and they’ve evolved away from the sounds of their predecessor. I can’t say much for their first four albums, though I’ve listened to them, because I never really paid close attention. So I’ll be approaching this one alone, not as a comparison to their earlier stuff. I just thought I should give a brief history of the band first, since they have a legendary if now distant past.

I can’t heap endless praise on this the way I have a bad habit of doing for most albums. I’ve got pretty mixed feelings about it all in all.

Arche

Though classified as black metal, the driving force behind a lot of V is heavy metal–a perhaps generic term, but fitting in this case. The bulk of the album is very riff-driven. You can get a feel for their multi-styled approach from the very beginning. Though the chords build up into a melodic death sound that eventually breaks into black metal, the song is quick to return to the opening riff. You get a lot of repetition, but also a lot of opportunities for some really awesome solos–something that rarely coexists with blast beats and tremolo. The sound Vreid’s created here opens the doors to a lot of metal elements generally absent in specifically black metal, and the way they take advantage of it–the ample guitar solos first and foremost–are the album’s biggest highlights for me. You’ll hear plenty of death metal and (not exactly foreign to the genre) thrash metal as well.

The Blood Eagle

But there are some major detractors. I’m not always convinced that the sounds they put together really work. The Blood Eagle could be a pretty cool if simplistic heavy metal song, but the singer kind of kills it for me. I love his vocal style. I really do. But if perfect for black metal, it just doesn’t always work laid over a song that just as frequently calls to mind Iced Earth. Actually singing could make this song work. Alternatively, I could see them pulling off some deep, guttural death metal vox here. But the contrast between the tameness of the song and the shrill harshness of black metal vocals doesn’t find a rewarding middle ground. A lot of the album’s lyrics are pretty suspect too, especially, again, on this particular song. The opening lines, “Born out of worlds of fire and ice / The nature of spirits embrace our lives / From the underworld to above / We worship the fertile soil“, cease to be plausibly uplifting and just sound kind of sissy when followed up by a chorus of “Carved in the back / Blood-strained wings are dressed / An image of grotesque / The blood eagle of human flesh“. Pagan spirituality and gore-grind guts-fucking just don’t mix.

The Others and the Look

On some tracks, this one a great case in point, all of the elements Vreid employ come together to create diverse and enjoyable songs that never bore. On others I struggle to pay attention at all. Most of them have rewarding bits here and there with a lot of drag in between–repetitive riffs like in Arche and acoustic/keyboard interludes that don’t amount to much. I suppose it doesn’t help that I’m not fond of death metal, which Vreid seem to incorporate a lot of; someone with opposing tastes may well hear this album from a very different perspective and find it quite the success. But given all the other new material out there, it’s pretty unlikely that anything will move me to keep on listening to this one. I think that’s my final verdict on V: not bad, but too frequently boring for its positive features to really shine.