Bandcamp Vansind come out of Slagelse with members tied to the Danish folk-metal lineage of Svartsot and Vanir, and Hævnen plays exactly to that heritage, Nordic mythology and saga storytelling, revenge and sacrifice, songs with titles like “I Yggdrasils Skygge” and “Blodhævn.” This is folk metal in the Scandinavian melodic-death mould, all soaring choruses and battle-ready momentum, and worth saying plainly given the genre’s baggage: the framing here is myth and history, not the ethnonationalist reading the band’s own circle has gone out of its way to reject.
The songwriting is the draw. The album’s best move is its vocal contrast, harsh growls driving the verses while clean, folk-toned vocals carry the choruses, and the EQ separation is sharp enough that both sit clearly even in a dense mix. “Blodhævn” threads present, folk-clean female vocals over the growls beautifully, “Skæbnens Tunge Vej” earns its cinematic scope by letting the acoustic-orchestral passages breathe before the metal hits, and “Det Sidste Nådeskys” rides genuinely epic melodies. When Vansind set their atmospheric quiet against their heavy eruptions, the structural contrast carries real drama.
The problem is the master, and it is a modern one. Hævnen is run extremely hot, the dynamics squeezed flat into a dense, fatiguing wall of sound, and across the record the low mids stack up until the bass loses all contour and the triggered, clicky kick does the heavy lifting alone. The cymbals tip into harsh sibilance in the densest passages, and the micro-dynamics inside the loud sections are gone entirely. This is not the genre’s tradition talking, this is a polished symphonic-folk record sanded flat for volume, and it genuinely costs the album, the bigger the arrangement, the more the detail turns to mush.
That keeps Hævnen from the heights its songs are reaching for. The melodies, the vocal interplay and the atmospheric craft are all there, and folk-metal fans will find plenty to raise a horn to, especially in the quieter, more dynamic stretches. A more transparent, less crushed mix would have let these songs hit as hard as they clearly want to. As it is, it is a strong set of tunes fighting its own production.
Scandinavian folk and viking metal in the melodic-death mould: harsh growls in the verses against soaring clean, folk-toned choruses (with prominent female cleans), acoustic and orchestral passages opening into dense metal walls. The strength is the songwriting and the vocal contrast, sharp EQ separation keeping growls and cleans both clear, with effective quiet-loud drama on the best tracks (“Blodhævn”, “Skæbnens Tunge Vej”, “Det Sidste Nådeskys”). The consistent weakness is the master: run extremely hot and squeezed flat into a fatiguing wall of sound, with low-mid stacking that strips the bass of contour, a triggered clicky kick, harsh cymbals and no micro-dynamics left inside the loud sections. Not a genre-traditional rawness but a polished record flattened for loudness, and the denser the arrangement, the more the detail turns to mush.
Standout tracks: Skæbnens Tunge Vej, Blodhævn, Det Sidste Nådeskys
