The real thing
Imagine lying between train tracks at night and a ten mile long train carrying coal drives over you pretty quickly for seven minutes, just a constant rushing and clacking, unrelenting and unstoppable, that's 'Steg' the seventh track from Til Minne and a good place to start this review, you see this album is not for the people who wonder what all this black metal malarkey is about and think they'll 'give it a go'. This is old school Black metal for people who already know what it's about, give this to a fresh faced young kid and he'll wonder what the hell is going on.
This album is a side project of Gaahl, singer from Gorgoroth, Trelldom have been around since 1992 but in fifteen years have only released two albums and a demo, so here is album number three and some of the material on it goes back to the very beginning, the fact that you can't tell what's old and what's new tells you how old school this is.
There's no compromise to reach a wider audience here, it's a pounding swirl of chaotic guitars grinding out ever repeating riffs with a backing of machine gun drums that spells pure Norwegian Black Metal. There are slower parts but these are no less infernal and I have no problem imagining this being recorded in an icy wasteland as depicted on the cover of the album.
Production wise this could do with being sharpened up a little, it's one thing being old school but that doesn't mean you have to hark back to the days of eight track tape, OK maybe I'm being a bit harsh there but this does suffer from the biscuit tin snare and muffled bass drums so beloved of the early nineties. Having said that the vocals are quite up front in the mix, especially the spoken word parts so maybe they were trying to get them across as clearly as possible, you wouldn't want to miss a growl would you?
Let me just go over the main point again, this is not an album for the curious, Gorgoroth don't mess about and neither does Trelldom, Gaahl has been imprisoned for acting on his beliefs and the music he produces is produced with a serious intent, get this album if you know your Black metal and want to add to your collection.
As an addendum to this review if you want to know what the fuck I'm talking about go to the Trelldom myspace page and watch the documentary link to VBS, if you can't watch it all just watch part five.
http://www.myspace.com/trelldomband