Vemod is the third full length of Solbrud, Danish band author of a black metal definitely of good quality. In spite of the geographical and linguistic contiguity with Norway, from Hamlet’s homeland has not come out an industrial quantity of bands dedicated to the genre, so this quartet from the capital is in its own way a pleasant anomaly. Solbrud interpret the black with a vein at the same time icy and atmospheric, and all in all seem to turn their gaze much further west, towards the Canadian and U.S. coasts rather than pointing to the nearby Scandinavian lands: so more rarefied moments of ambient matrix alternate with sudden bursts of considerable melodic impulse, as happens emblematically in the opener Det Sidste Lys. Vemod consists of four long tracks that together reach the fifty minutes of duration, which makes challenging listening but at the same time allows Solbrud to develop with more calm and less frenzy their idea of black metal, which then becomes definitely exemplary for darkness in the first six minutes of hammering Forfald. Undoubtedly, the Danish band follows a well-established and fruitful scheme, entrusting to the tremolo of the guitars the task of outlining melodies that stand out on the fury of the blast beats, interrupting everything with more reflective passages that, in the end, have the function of artfully suspending the emotional flow and then further increasing the impact at the time of the resumption. After all, this is how it works for Menneskeværk and Besat Af Mørke, and what may seem obvious and repetitive is actually the ideal way to convey, by Solbrud, their shared apocalyptic vision concerning the fate of humanity. Vemod turns out to be one of the most convincing albums of the year: rabid, intense, obsessive but also able to make you think, in short, it’s hard to do better than that.
2017 – Indisciplinarian
Mournful Sounds 
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