Sweden’s Bergraven fit under the black metal umbrella just at the edge, enough to keep part of its shoulder dry while the rest is soaked with outside influence. And while 2007’s Dödsvisioner fooled around with the genre enough to warrant attention (and not to mention make a great, complex, dense metal record), the band’s followup – Till Makabert Väsen – features only fragments of black metal, and even those are diluted by mainmanonlyman Pär Gustavsson bottomless pot of strangeness. But while Väsen is even more dense and bizarre than Dödsvisioner, it pays off just as big when given the time, because much like its predecessor, it’s a record that requires your time and attention. It’s not an album about beauty or Vikings, but instead obsessed with its own ugliness, dropping a major chord or big chorus in just when things are on the verge of being too displeasing for too long. This is hardly a conventional metal record, and you’ll be hard pressed to find another one that sounds like it; with Till Makabert Väsen, Bergraven continue their journey to the strange, unexplored parts of the psyche.

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