review by: Mladen Škot
Right now, everybody is singing about how good it was back in the old Pagan days. You could live with honesty and dignity, drink mead, walk or hunt in the forests, be at one with Nature and occasionally crush a Christian skull or two. All fine and well, but it surely couldn't have been that good — there must have been something that they were afraid of, with all the unexplainable things around them? What were their women scaring their children with? What were their nightmares like? What were, in Mayhem's words, their Pagan fears? Probably something like Jotunspor.
When Cold Spring Records approached two ex-members of Gorgoroth, King and Kvitrafn, and asked them to do a "noisy black metal album" for their new sub-label, Satanas Rex, they went to the studio and after two months came out with Gleipnirs Smeder ("Blacksmiths of Gleipnir"). The intention was to make music in honor of their ancient Nordic heritage. The result is all that and more. Jotunspor have united primitive black metal sounds and modern technology into a violent sonic reminder of all the fears engraved in the deepest nature of Man, by all the ages he survived surrounded by dangers and uncertainty of primitive life. Most of us have never been aware of it, in our comfortable, modern environments, but this is something that absolutely has to be acknowledged.
The first, title track, sets the tone for the rest of the album — the sound is commanding and overwhelming. Gloomy guitars, distant howls and echoes, metallic industrial sounds, tormented singing and simple, relentless drumming bring a shivery, claustrophobic feeling and a freezing atmosphere. Simple riffs in a classic Norwegian necro style and bestial vocals have never sounded this haunting, almost like Transilvanian Hunger, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and new Gorgoroth merged into one horrifying entity.
"Svartalvheims Djup" comes as a surprise and a question — it's only the second track, and it is a seven-minute, ambient track with cave sounds, slow, rumbling bass and more haunting voices from the dark past. It might sound unreasonable to put such a track so early — but when you realize that it's a continuation of "Gleipnirs Smeder," it becomes a natural part of the album. There is a feeling that Jotunspor could have made ambient versions of all the other songs — and they would be as scary as the distorted, metal ones.
The logical continuation comes with "Solartjuven," a slow, engulfing, Bathory-type piece sounding like something that has been buried and forgotten countless ages ago, now striving to awake and return from dust and oblivion, with a vengeance for those who have forgotten or ignored their primeval, archetypal instincts.
The next three tracks are a return to simplistic, epic, thunderous, mesmerizing black metal. The rhythms change from simple beats to furious blasts, and the suffocating atmosphere just becomes more and more intense — waves of primal sonic impacts leaving nothing behind them. The suitable ending, but not in any way a release from the pressure, is titled "Ildkrig," and presents itself as a combination of tribal, marching drums and meditative chanting surrounded by a wall of ancient noise.
Jotunspor is a studio project with no intentions of playing live. It is still not certain whether there will be any more albums — but with Gleipnirs Smeder, for at least once — the past is alive and here to haunt you. (10/10)
