Band:	Dödsrit
Album:	Nocturnal Will
Style:	Crust Punk, Black metal
Release date:	March 22, 2024
A review by:	Netzach

01. Irjala
02. Nocturnal Fire
03. Ember And Ash
04. Utmed Gyllbergens Stig
05. As Death Comes Reaping
06. Celestial Will

Dödsrit sacrifice some of their punky uniqueness for a folksy, other uniqueness. The result? Cascadian metal, Nordic style.

You’ll find every track on Nocturnal Will to be based on a simple folk melody, played by the lead guitar, that then evolves into multiple variations over the course of up to ten minutes. It’s the sort of approach to songwriting that’s worked so well for bands such as Moonsorrow, and there is the same epic quality and sort of self-confident surety to it that makes it work the same way it does for the aforementioned Finnish band. Dödsrit (Death Rite) are Swedish, of course, and you don’t need to know which language their band name is in to realise that they are, indeed, very Swedish (well, they might have been Norwegian, but to my ears, nah, there’s a slight difference), as long as you have any experience of listening to Swedish folk music.

Now, what defines Swedish folk music? It’s not the easiest thing to pinpoint, but the closest I get to an objective description is a pentatonic, desolate, introspective melancholy that in all its darkness still retains an undeniable sense of celebratory majesty. It is not made for pub crawls, like Irish or British folk music might be, nor is it made for beer tents on a mountain slope, like German folk music might be, nor is it made for… any other place than the cold, empty, wild, and unforgiving northern forests and mountains of Scandinavia. This is what Dödsrit have attempted to convey here, and quite successfully, I might add. Look at a map of Europe, flip Sweden upside down, and the tip of it will end up somewhere around Rome, or even Sicily. Longitudinally speaking, this country spans the entirety of Europe, and guess what? Nearly all of it is pure wilderness. Like Siberia, only a bit more temperate, thanks to the Gulf Stream - still full of absolutely nothing at all, though.

Dödsrit used to play a sort of punky black metal that made them stand out of the crowd to me, and that punkiness is all but gone on their latest album. However, they’ve made up for that by taking the best of bands like Agalloch and Thrawsunblat, filtered it through a thoroughly Nordic lens, and spat out a beautiful work of melodic, atmospheric black metal. Nocturnal Will begins with “Irjala” (which as far as I know is simply a Finnish surname), which instantly introduces an epic, catchy, folksy lead motif that remains throughout the song for its entire runtime, only it never really repeats itself, but rather morphs and evolves as if on its own into various different takes on the same idea, while the drums switch between blast beats and heavy, warlike toms, and the vocals provide a trebly, shrieking percussion that is used surprisingly sparingly, making it be to good effect when it actually appears. There’s a lot of instrumental work on “Irjala” and the following songs, with the numerous acoustic bits definitely bringing to mind Agalloch, only the melodies here are based on Nordic folk music rather than… well, whatever Agalloch based their music on - I wouldn’t presume to know.

Mostly each song on Nocturnal Will follows the same pattern, beginning with a very memorable folksy melody that then sort of allows itself (rather than is allowed to, if that makes sense) to develop into various perspectives and moods, while still keeping in touch with its origins. There is a slight dip in momentum in the middle part of the album, with the instrumental “Utmed Gyllbergens Stig” (Along The Trail Of The Gilded Mountains) - which is a beautiful piece of music - setting up for a grand finish that “As Death Comes Reaping” never really provides, and this loss of momentum is felt all the way to the final moments of the album, but you could really start by listening to any of the songs here (save for the short interlude that is “Ember And Ash”), play the songs in any succession, and find a great work of melodic, atmospheric, and majestic black metal.

This arbitrariness to the tracklist order might be taken as a point of contention, and while it is true that the album as a whole comes off as more of a collection of great songs than a complete whole, there’s some sort of story being told here that however doesn’t come through entirely in the dynamics of the music, as each song builds on more or less the same idea. This has the benefit, however, of making Nocturnal Will an album you can listen to from start to finish, or just pick a track from whenever you feel like it, and get the same impression either way. It’s also a quite unique piece of music; a Nordic take on Cascadian metal, if you will. There’s not a lot that stops me from giving this a 9/10, but I’m sticking to my integer ratings, so consider this the strongest kind of 8/10 I could give.