Vananidr – In Silence Descent

Band: Vananidr
Title: In Silence Descent
Label: Avantgarde Music
Release date: October 25th, 2024
Country: Sweden
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording

Vananidr is one of these consistent bands that has been releasing nothing but great Black Metal through all its existence. “In Silence Descent” is their 5th studio album since the band’s foundation in 2018, but this band has a background as Synodus Horrenda, an Extreme Metal band that operated between 2010 and 2018 and released a sole album. And Synodus Horrenda came from the ashes of Hydra, a band created in 1995 by Tytan that just a few years later recruited Anders Eriksson (the main musician behind Vananidr), and it turns out that Tytan is nowadays a member in Vananidr too.

Well this was just a bit of history as an introduction to my review… Sometimes I just need to look into the roots of a band to understand where they come from, where it all has its origin… to have the whole picture of their music.

Now, talking about “In Silence Descent”, it’s a more than worthy successor to the previous albums released by Vananidr; in each of them you can feel the Swedish raw melancholy biting your bones and giving you chills, and with this new release this happens too. The fact that the Nordic folk-ish vibes are present in Black Metal is a thing I particularly love, there’s another band that comes to my mind when I think about it and it’s Blodtår, they also imprint an insanely amount of Scandinavian melancholy and folk melodies to their music.

But, returning to this particular release; a standout point for me is the bass, I really enjoy listening to this instrument having some predominance in the overall sound. There are spectacular bass lines in “Revel in Tragedy”, there’s a lot of deep resonance and this makes my Metal heart happy.

The lineup in “In Silence Descent” is the same as in the previous album “Beneath the Mold”, consisting of Anders Eriksson playing guitars and doing vocals, Fredrik Andersson at drums, and Per Lindström at bass duties. These three guys play/have played in different bands and the way in which they complement each other in Vananidr is simply awesome, like of course they had to be together in this! And, this year there has been a new addition to the band: Titan, as the new guitar player. Well, a “new/old” addition, ‘cause it feels (in part) like going back to where it all began…

I can listen to some sparkles of Swedish melancholic folklore in Vananidr. At times it’s like the Nordic forests are surrounding me in some way, I can feel the cold and icy winter landscape because there’s a lot of cold in the music by this band.There’s a lot of melancholy and also typical Nordic melodies mixed with the global distorted sound, and this makes a unique trademark, this is Vananidr style, easily recognizable for me.

“Forest of Grief” is a great opener for an album of this kind, it pushes you gently until you fall into the hole of grief and desperation. The characteristic guitars in Vananidr (as I said, icy, sharp, distorted to achieve a sound of agony and pain) make their way until your brain, and the brutal rumble of the drums is due to the fact that, according to a note from the band, they were recorded in an old church… hence that spectacular sound. The bass resonates deep, wrapping the melodies with an obscure and heavy veil to balance the extreme coldness of the guitars.

I love the contrast between the passages where drums run at full speed and guitars sound like they are in a frenzy, and those where the instrumentation allows you to breathe a bit by focusing on a melody or simply piercing your brain with an icy sound. Desolation is my main feeling when “Tearing Skin” strikes, this particular song has an unbearable amount of grief in it, holy shit, I feel so broken and we’re not even halfway through the album…

Another song that totally stands out is “Black Feathers”, right from the start it gains my heart with its overwhelming Nordic sound. Drums like a steamroller, guitars and bass drawing a folk-ish melody, and when vocals enter it all goes into a blacker dimension. Anders’ voice is one of those tortured, twisted ones that transmits pain and suffering. And I love the effect that it has on me. I feel relieved, comforted, as if that suffering was mine and I could cry it out myself.

The last song in the album, “Burden”, is highly atmospheric, and the perfect closure for an album that has been devouring the entrails of the listener with its raw coldness. I still haven’t recovered from this painful experience. 10/10 by Sílvia

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10/10 Immortal Classic
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