Låt Köttet Dö (Let the Flesh Die) is the debut ep for this impressive Swedish band called Vanhävd (missing). The translation of the moniker and the title of the album, of course, take us into territories where pain made into music is at home, and in fact Vanhävd offers us about twenty-five minutes of masterful black death doom. Conceptually influenced by the thought of the Norwegian antinatalist philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, the band shows a very personal sound, in which melody and strong riffing, asphyxiating slowdowns and intriguing rhythmic accelerations find a balanced space, for an objectively exciting result for those who love the genre. The title track says a lot about the potential of the Scandinavian band, with its dramatic beginning and the disturbing guitar melody streaked by the fierce singing of Adam Skog, and Om Den Vulgära Farsens Nonsense is no less, opened by an always not very reassuring sound of music box that preludes to a beautiful and poignant harmony created by the guitar tremolo, while the final Drömmaren offers a central phase of a desperate black doom. In addition to the surprising quality of the music offered, propaedeutic to a possible future masterpiece on long distance, it is a great merit of Vanhävd to have divulged the thought of Zappfe, hastily dismissed as a manifesto of pessimism when, instead, it would be much more honest to call it raw realism: never as these days his words acquire even more specific weight: “Nothing exists without him (man), all lines converge towards him, the world is nothing but a ghostly echo of his voice. He jumps to his feet screaming at the top of his lungs, he would like to vomit himself onto the earth along with his impure meal; he feels madness looming and would like to give himself death before he loses his ability to do so. But as he weighs the impending death, he also grasps its nature and cosmic implications. His creative imagination builds new frightening perspectives behind the curtain of death and he sees that there is no salvation there either. He can now discern the contours of his own biological-cosmic terms: he is the hopeless prisoner of the universe, destined for unknown prospects. From that moment on he is in a state of endless panic.“

2018 – Independent