Beats and yelling shorts, 26th August, 26

Vafurlogi: Gneisti af eldi GuðsOut 26th June on NoEvDia/Oration True to the spirit of Icelandic black metal, this is a rhythmically informal, cyclically structured set of layered guitar chords defined by loose dissonance and overlapping main themes that seem to emerge from the background before casually decaying away. But unlike Svartidauði or Carpe Noctem, Vargurlogi point the music toward the orchestral over the industrial, furnishing us with a surplus of material oriented around fatalism, a funereal sense of dread reminiscent of someone like Tchornobog. Although nothing remarkable by the standards of cavernous, dissonant modern extreme metal Vargurlogi at least take the time to flesh out these compositions at a structural level, giving listeners who tend to look past the aesthetic packaging at least some talking points. Loose, open refrains stick to a rigid form of repetitional development, allowing broader harmonic material to soar above this and give the tracks a sense of motion…