Djevel created a frostbitten black metal formula by infusing folkish chants, cold synth, and beautifully crafted rhythm guitars without focusing on the soaring synth that has made them one of the most revered acts in the black metal genre today. The album’s five-minute opener “Bespottelsen” presents innovative riff patterns, and ominous black metal rasps carried through multiple paces, and hooks you to the classical compositions.
Synth and melodies in this final installment trilogy are a towering achievement in terms of the dark spectacles, with the grim song structure and atmosphere of the heavy synth cloaking the menacing riffs in “En Vinter Efter Kommer”. Djevel wraps seven nocturnal hymns and they are so beautifully crafted in atmospheric melancholy, riffs and melodies create a cold and dark wintry effect, although I am quite certain that the melodic folk affair here lurks behind the nostalgia of bands like Ulver.
The uniqueness and quality crowns “Natt Til Ende” as one of the best black metal albums of the year, the chant passages are saturated in the grimness of 90s black metal as each riff and melody offers many epic moments.
The slow tempo and the flow of the riffing add splendor, and they are immensely catchy the tremolo riffs are omnipresent in “Ravnehymne”. The heavy dose of the blistering drums suddenly erupts like avalanches, the song has a great variation in the pacing and with the synth and soaring lead section that offers a cold icy feeling wrapped in the bleak harshness of the grim rasping.
The slow bass guitar in the opening of the song “Jesu Lidelse” is a dramatic hymn and wonderfully composed, the chants become the key element in this six-minute epic song as it highlights the musical elaboration full of melancholy and darkness. The synth passages are sublime and well-placed with memorable chants, Djevel’s songwriting formula evokes the ancient relics of 90s black metal.
The majesty and the triumphant come in abundance; riffs have a mournful tone; its grim atmospheric ranges can create vast images of forlorn wintry landscapes draped in ice; the epic sensation fills these songs and makes you wander in your imagination.
The nocturnal black metal spells come to full effect in “Under Nattens Fane I Fandens Prakt” which is comprised entirely of the cold sharp tone of the tremolo-picked riffs and slow synth waves echoing slowly into the ether. The dark ominous elements are infused into the songs; the lush synth arrangements set this song apart from the rest, however, what caught my attention is the vicious dark rasping and the excellent drum fills.
The drumming is versatile; and with the blast beats used in many sections, Djevel does something truly admiring when it applies the piano and the ambient elements in the interlude “I Skovaandsfavn” which is very reminiscent of Wongraven, and old Burzum.
The track starts slowly with the piano note with the sound of the cawing raven in the background steals your breath to the majestic nocturnal symphony to the night. The haunting grasp of melodies submerges you in deep oceans of darkness under the shimmering moon. The blistering blast beats in the fourteen-minute track “Natt Til Ende” offer a flurry of ferocious and majestic moments in this epic track, the tremolo maintains the cold sharp tone and the synth accompanies the guitar.
The grandeur of the compositional scale follows the second wave of black metal and there is enough here to hook you up to the flickering synth and the fast tremolo pickings, the production is a bit grimy and dark which somehow comes close to the lo-fi style of black metal.
The slow pacing and the synth layers come and go under the beating of the drums, Djevel triumphantly presents some of its best works, everything from the weeping shrieking, somberness and the dismal chanting transforms into a majestic culmination.
REVIEW SCORE
9 | Among all the Norwegian black metal acts today Djevel stands tall and proud, though it might be difficult to choose my favorite album by this band, I would say that “Natt Til Ende” is as raw and dark as a cold wintry night. |
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