Svarttjern Norway

"Svarttjern's "Towards the Ultimate" belongs to the more brutal end of black metal, although there are a lot of melodic moments on the album, too. The brutality on this album comes primarily from the influences from thrash metal and old school death metal, such as riffs with substance and groove, and the music is, for black metal endowed with a generous amount palm-muting.

There are, of course, the defining features of black metal, such as blastbeats, tremolo-picking, dissonance, tense harmonies, and so on. And the black metal elements are still dominant, but they are combined with the more thrashy and groovy elements such a way that Svarttjern's music becomes sort of varied and very headbanging friendly.

The production is clean and well-defined, but not polished, and that's great because you can actually hear what is going on without the production being so polished that it subtracts from the brutality and aggression of the tunes.

If you like acts like Mayhem and Immortal, then you might want to check out Svarttjern's "Towards the Ultimate".

(review originally posted at metalmusicarchives.com)"