Sorgeldom is a Swedish band that features a somewhat progressed black metal approach that incorporates both old 90s style blastbeats with moody instrumental passages as well as hints of progressive aspects such as Ved Buens Ende (just a tad in the bass lines). Their debut, Innerlig Förmörkelse, theoretically should have been one of those first releases that deserves some attention but this is a band that utterly bungled their production and unfortunately, it sounds deliberate. I get that black metal thrives on the unproduced, unpolished sounds. And yes, many black metal bands feature a sound that lives in the treble frequencies. However, Sorgeldom has pulled an Ulver and gone out of their way to eliminate the bass end of things to an extreme, nearly unlistenable level. It is as though once they hit the mixing table, someone found all the bass and midrange equalizer knobs and slid them right down. I've tried listening to this album over regular speakers and two different sets of headphones. Only my high end headphones have managed to elicit enough bass tones to make it even remotely tolerable. The band's songwriting suggests they have quite a bit of promise, but considering it's taken such an effort to not have tinnitus triggered by their ear splitting tones, it's hard to pick out any worthwhile moments.

The fact that this treble only recording approach was most likely deliberate is sad. Bands only get one opportunity for a first impression and Sorgeldom has made a poor one. It is entirely possible to engineer a raw black metal style in the studio these days, but this is just a bad caricature of that sound. I'm not sure what sort of thought process goes into this sort of effort. Sometimes musicians outsmart themselves and perhaps Sorgeldom simply didn't have anyone in their circle of friends to tell them this was simply a bad idea. Maybe one day they'll remix this and actually allow all the recording dynamics to be present.

Review by John Chedsey

Review date: 01/2012

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