Album Review: Mylingen – Svartsyn
Band: Mylingen
Title: Svartsyn
Label: Independent
Release date: March 7th, 2025
Country: Sweden
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording
Album Review: Mylingen – Svartsyn by Sílvia
“Svartsyn” is a 4 track EP by Mylingen, with a running time of 26 minutes that blends some of the darkest emotions and feelings with plenty of melodies, captivating musical landscapes and some Swedish folk tunes here and there (“Hatets avgrund” is a fantastic example of how the use of Swedish melancholy can break the listener’s heart) . This is not for consuming in a rush. Not the kind of Metal you can listen to distract you from your thoughts. This provokes emotions that may drag you to some dark places. Even if you don’t understand the Swedish lyrics, you can feel the cold, the solitude, the devastation… emanating from the music and the harsh and tore up vocals.
Same as in their previous full-length “Under en svart himmel” (that I had the pleasure of reviewing when it was released, you can read my impressions about it here ), all the instruments are played by Viktor Jonas, and Eric Holmberg is responsible for the threatening, harsh and blackened vocals. They together have built another wonderful yet grim work with “Svartsyn”, where shadows and cold intertwine with beautiful moments.
Guitars do a great melodic work, including melancholic passages by using an acoustic guitar and some ethereal synths (as in “Månens kraft”: only a minute and a half of the song has passed and all the intensity breaks into an icy slow passage, where time seems to stop and emotions dance around, until the harsh vocals and heavy instrumentation return you to the dark and fierce reality). The bass is always there, plucking, emphasizing the depth of the sound, creating an emotional and vibrating background. And for the drums… At times they are intense, bringing a lot of heaviness to the songs; at times they disappear, and acoustic guitar cradled by synths create wonderful, ethereal, timeless passages. The balance is fantastic.
Lyrics talk about the extreme darkness that can dwell in a human soul; the opener “Svartsyn” (“Blackness”) is like an ode to loneliness, while “Mörkrets spiral” (“Spiral of darkness”) expresses the angst of being a soulless shell, feeling dead inside… This is devastating. It breaks me. “Hatets avgrund” (“The abyss of hate”) is a song that talks about being full of hatred, evil, thoughts of death towards others. And the closing “Månens kraft” (“The power of the Moon”) depicts how the Moon can be so alluring and, under her spell, the man becomes wolf and feels the need to hunt and kill, to satisfy their lustful thoughts. It sounds like an allegory of modern society to me. Well, as you can see the lyrics are intense, and I love the kind of devastation they can bring to me.
Mylingen has won a piece of my heart with “Svartsyn”. 9,5/10
9,5/10 Epic Storm
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