Band:	Vreid
Album:	Wild North West
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	April 2021

01. Wild North West
02. Wolves At Sea
03. The Morning Red
04. Shadows Of Aurora
05. Spikes Of God
06. Dazed And Reduced
07. Into The Mountains
08. Shadowland

There are still people out there eagerly awaiting a Windir album from Vreid. Finally, their wish has been granted.

Well, almost granted, anyway. Wild North West continues with the black metal bops fans have come to expect from the Norwegian quartet, infused with some influences that both rock and roll, but the poignance of concept behind this latest offering elevates the overall tone and delivers its messages in similar serious fashion to 2009's Milorg. While the songwriting has always come across as somewhat middling (all sense of fun and melody notwithstanding) there's an inherent level of seemingly restrained skill and untapped potential that permeates the band's discography, as if afraid to fully commit to their natural inclination lest they sound too familiar to their Windir days. Of course, featuring some of Valfar's musicianship from previously unreleased material nearly two decades prior certainly betrays that motive, though not so far as to completely abandon the core Vreid sound.

Given the nature of the album's relatable themes and attached film to further immerse its audience in the personal experience, it isn't surprising that the accompanying music therein has a focused, aggressive, and raw quality to it. Rather than emphasizing harmony, as has been their wont, the combination of Dingsøyr and Bakketeig on guitars tend towards thrashing black metal for the majority of the album's 45 minutes, harkening back to both genres' old school origins. Despite reverting to the ways of old, it's still refreshing from a stylistic perspective, which is a difficult enough task to achieve given the genre, though spanning a decade without any lineup changes will at least provide a well executed collection of hard hitting tunes.

Not in any way groundbreaking or revolutionary, and honestly not even an album likely to end up on many best-of-the-year lists, Wild North West nevertheless will earn its place among some of the strongest Vreid albums to date, while perhaps appealing most among their catalog to the type of fan who gets excited about a KK's Priest release because nobody else is going to drop another Painkiller.