Description

2021 press. Double album on red vinyls with gatefold cover. Limited 400 copies

Windir’s debut album Soknardalr stood out when it was released. Instead of being just another necro-black metal outfit based on the early Venom stuff, Winder came up with a daring amalgam of metal, progressive rock, classical, and Norwegian folk music, requiring no small amount of compositional sophistication to be pulled off. Recorded in Oslo, in a mere four days, to boot, this album’s surprisingly well-produced seven tracks fuse layers upon layers of keyboards and guitars on an almost unprecedented scale. So this solo project of musician Terje Bakken, under the name of Valfar, did something that no similar band at the time was doing, writing melodies as convincing and classic metal-related like here. Though obvious nods to Burzum and Dissection must get credit for the writing of this album, Bakken had come out with something on par only with itself. The riffs sound rigid and hypnotic, due to the trebly sound unbalancing followed by many co-national acts, and the album as a whole is something not even Graveland were able to come up with: a release that truly puts in music the northern melancholy.

Track list:
1. Sognariket Sine Krigarar
2. Det Som Var Haukareid
3. Morket Sin Fyrste
4. Sognariket Si Herskarinne
5. I Ei Krystallnatt
6. Rovhaugane
7. Likbor
8. Sóknardalr