Bandcamp Fyrnask has been building cold, ritual black metal in relative shadow since 2008, the work of one German musician who goes by Fyrnd, and Íosir, his latest for Ván Records, is a record that wants to swallow you whole. Ten tracks of dense tremolo riffing, ambient dread and doom-slow weight, the vocals buried as just another texture in the murk, it is atmospheric black metal as total immersion: not songs so much as a single grey weather system you step inside and lose your bearings in.
At its best the density is the point. The guitars mass into walls of saturated tremolo, synth and ambient textures bleed through the seams, and the whole thing moves with a ritual, processional patience that owes as much to drone and doom as to black metal orthodoxy. “Krýndur af tóminu” is where it breathes best, a track the master lets keep its dynamics, and the slower, more industrial passages give the record a genuinely oppressive grandeur. Mastered by Victor Bullok, better known as V. Santura, it has the heft you would expect from that pedigree.
It also has the modern problem that pedigree often brings. Íosir is mixed loud and compressed, the wall pushed so hard against the ceiling that on the faster tracks the tremolo picking blurs into an undifferentiated mush and the drums turn clicky and flat. Raw atmospheric black metal can absolutely live in a wall of sound, that is half its power, but there is a difference between raw and flattened, and across ten dense tracks the lack of dynamic air starts to tire. The atmosphere is real. It would hit harder with room to move.
For devotees of the dense, cold, Ván-aligned end of black metal, Íosir delivers exactly that, an immersive ritual grey expanse to disappear into. Just be ready to meet it on its own punishing, airless terms.
Íosir is dense, ritual atmospheric black metal: walls of saturated tremolo guitar, ambient and industrial textures bleeding through, doom-slow patience underneath, all built for total immersion rather than individual songs. The wall is the aesthetic. The limitation is the master, loud and heavily compressed to the point that on the faster tracks the tremolo picking blurs into mush, the bass sinks to a featureless sub-foundation, and the triggered-sounding drums flatten out. “Krýndur af tóminu” is the track allowed to keep its dynamics and breathes best, and the slower industrial passages land with real oppressive weight. Across ten dense tracks the airless mix is the main thing holding the atmosphere back.
Standout tracks: Krýndur af tóminu, Í Munnlausri Dýrð
