Formloff - Spyhorelandet

Six years after an absolutely shocking debut album sees Formloff return a different band. It hits you when you see the cover art immediately, how very grim it looks compared to the gaudy motor stage show cover of the debut. They even have a trve black metal logo now! In fact, if it wasn’t for the cover art I never would have gone anywhere near this album after being so offended by the first one. The band probably deserves a new name in all honesty. 2006’s Adjo Silo saw this two-piece add vocoders of the infamous sort and asylum escapee-cum-indie rocker vocals (a terrifically heinous pair of things to have near each other) to songs that were basically cheap Solefald rip-offs, resulting in an all-around, generally insulting failure.

 But now that Formloff has realized that Skywalker was a douche they’ve crossed over to the dark side like all the other cool people, making one of the only possible moves they could have made in order to recover their stained dignity. For a band credited as part of the black metal scene (even if it’s in the avant-garde quarter), the new addition of actual musical components of black metal on Spyhorelandet helps to not piss me off instantly. We have blastbeats aplenty and certain grim quality for the majority of the listening, actually. Only two things really remain from the debut: One, a sensibility to create progressive and/or experimental music, and two, the accordion keyboard passages, which work in the colder climate of this sophomore release. Keyboards and synthesizers in general are much more subtle on this record. Gone are the crooning Norwegian pop artiste regurgitations of yore. There are very few clean vocals on Spyhorelandet and they are honest efforts. Formloff are still experimenting, or perhaps this release is where they’ve actually begun. Musical styles such as indie, progressive and jazz creep their way in without crossing any lines. There is also plenty of pace and time signature changes to keep things interesting as well. But it really all boils down to black metal in the end (thankfully). I myself, in spite of myself, found myself really enjoying every one of the songs on this album, some more than others but overall they are polished, atmospheric, and interesting. There is a lot of great really cold BM riffing on this album too – who would’ve known they had it in them? Apparently, however, this was the style of their earlier demo material.

I’ve got to give the band credit, it’s pretty impressive how they manage to make us forget all those bouncing, happy melodies on Adjo Silo and provide a work of quality black metal that actually sports bleakness and frost. Traditional black metal overrides and integrates the band’s experimental tendencies in a far smoother way than anyone was ever expecting. This is certainly the most surprising album I’ve listened to so far this year, the distance in quality being one of the greatest I’ve seen between two consecutively released records. I encourage the band to stick with it now that they’ve got it right. I encourage metalheads to listen to this album and give Formloff a second chance because Spyhorelandet shows they deserve it.

In short: Well-played “avant-garde” black metal that still has its spirit close to the core of true black metal. Not for fans of their first album.

Standout tracks: “Det Dritet Som Renner Ut I Ua”, “Drokkne I Ei Flo Ta Åske”

Score: 8.5