Gaahls Wyrd has a new story for us.
Six years after its first chapter, the band led by iconic vocalist Kristian “Gaahl” Espedal (Trelldom, ex-Gorgoroth, ex-God Seed, ex-Wardruna) and completed by Ole “Lust Kilman” Walaunet (guitar, The Batallion, ex-God Seed), Kevin “Spektre” Kvåle (drums, From the Vastland, Horizon Ablaze, Svartelder) and Andreas “Nekroman” Salbu (bass, Reptilian, live for Abbath) unveil their second album, Braiding the Stories, on Season of Mist.
The story begins with The Dream, a simple but soaring introduction on which Gaahl‘s voice greets us with an impressive calm, reinforcing the feeling of soothing before the melody becomes a little more lively, until finally joining Braiding the Stories, the eponymous track. There’s immediately more saturation on this track, but the voice remains clear, haunting and very reassuring, taking advantage of the soaring Prog roots to fall silent for a long moment, leaving the instruments to impose lead and keyboard parts, before returning to guide us towards Voices in My Head. Like the first track, it’s fairly simple and short, but it slowly shifts us into pure anguish before letting Time and Timeless Timeline bring Black Metal back to life via chaotic riffs on which the vocalist remains unmoved, offering us some disturbing screams all the same. We follow with And the Now, which plunges us back into an eerie climate, playing with steamy occult tones to better forge the ambient mystery and let it grow almost imperceptibly stronger, culminating in the oppressive final, followed by Through the Veil, a new, fairly short composition tinged with the unsettling sounds of the previous one. Visions and Time follows, exposing us to the vortex of tortured vocals that complements the incredibly gentle lead vocal, but the instrumental is also subject to change, moving from violence to dissonance, then gradually weaving back to that unexpected conflagration, before Root the Will returns to livelier sounds. The jerky patterns and Gaahl‘s piercing scream blend together almost naturally, but the same innate alliance can be noted when the vocals become bolder, competing with cold, cutting guitars before running aground on Flowing Starlight, a final composition with marked esoteric Post-Metal touches, developing an imposing crystalline sound as the vocalist shows us the extent of his talent, and the mystical flow slowly trickles down to nothingness.
After conquering Black Metal, Gaahl has turned Gaahls Wyrd into a vessel capable of exploring the furthest reaches of his desires. Braiding the Stories is not the most violent album, nor even the calmest, but it is exactly what its creators wanted it to be: a mental journey through mystical and mysterious sounds.
85/100