V is a Swedish band that is officially active since last year, when it debuted with the ep VI, but that actually takes the moves, albeit with different monikers and conformations, since the last century: it’s no coincidence that the musicians who are part of it are all of proven experience within the national scene, starting from the best known among them, drummer Daniel Liljekvist, long time member of Katatonia and now in the excellent In Mourning. The band’s first full length, entitled Pathogenisis, is a remarkable compositional effort that tends to combine sludge, doom and post metal, infusing that patina of icy sense of misanthropic abandonment typically Swedish: the quartet keeps faith with the expectations, since the six tracks along which the work winds appear much deeper than we are used to who engages with the genres mentioned above in these times, where you often prefer an impact much more direct and violent than an approach, at least in part, intimate. The vision of society by V appears cynical and detached but, despite this, the sound is anything but aseptic, thanks to the skill with which the band handles and reworks the impulses of the darkest metal: it’s so that the asphyxiating doom of the title track takes on features that become more and more dramatic, while the dry The Order is a treaty to be delivered to posterity on how you can compose a devastating song, without raising the tone too much or using special effects, if you don’t want to consider as such the beautiful guitar solo that closes in the best way a work of great intensity and depth. Pathogenisis is the classic album that could find converging consents, from listeners devoted to genres united by a dark and reflective mood.

2017 – Suicide Records