Though it might seem counterintuitive, there’s actually a bold calculus at work for a band digging in the blood-soaked trenches of a well-established style. Artistically speaking, the stakes are higher but the payoff is lower. All it takes is just the right whiff of pure derivativeness for most listeners to write you off as a pale imitation of the real thing. Conversely, even if you knock it out of the park, the highest praise you’re likely to see is, “Well, this is really good, but it’s still pretty standard.”
Of course, that so many bands still wade into such no-win terrain is likely a result of laziness. It’s the path of least resistance. And yet, for other bands, there’s an extra spark – an extra splash of piss-wine and hellfire attack – which suggests they’re not in this game because it’s easy; they’re in this game because they’ve got something to SAY.
Vanhelgd, thankfully, belongs to this latter group.
Even so, Vanhelgd’s got a few more hurdles to overcome because of the following two facts: Vanhelgd are from Sweden, and Vanhelgd play death metal. This means they have already come face to face with an increasingly inescapable dilemma: unless you’re plying a progressive or avant-garde variant, there are no new riffs left in death metal. None. (Of course, the uncomfortable truth is that for any band playing in a nominally traditional style of heavy metal, all the riffs were used up long ago.)
The only real move in that situation is to own up to it and craft the most potent, devastating tunes of which you’re capable. The band’s third album, Relics of Sulphur Salvation, is a raw-edged triumph, then, because of the way Vanhelgd strikes a tightly coiled balance between the kinetic energy of their forward-tumbling momentum and the oozing, phlegm-coated density of their grizzled H(a)M(m)-2(er) strike of a guitar tone.
This is dense, serious, and sinister death metal that, despite moving with the same fleet motions of countless bands both before and after, still feels fresh and vital. That energy is critical, because while there’s no bold new innovation to be had, there’s nothing wasted – no fat, nothing phoned in, nothing drags, and everything is played with bone-deep conviction. For lack of a more scientific description, then: it really sounds like the dudes in Vanhelgd are feeling it.
There’s a fearsome intelligence at work here that calls to mind such other luminaries of modern death as The Chasm and Dead Congregation, and yet while Vanhelgd are deadly serious, they never come across as self-defeatingly so (*ahem* Necros Christos *cough*). In part, that’s due to the clear attention to stylistic diversity, from the loose rock fills leading into clattering blasts on “Where All Flesh is Soil,” to the riveting conclusion of album opener “Dödens Maskätna Anlete,” which drapes fierce tremolo octaves atop its tumult. In addition to offering up huge, greasy riffs with much more liberal doses of lead guitar than typical for the style, Vanhelgd’s drummer is spry and judicious with perfect ride cymbal accents.
It occurs to me that in Relics of Sulphur Salvation, there are two modes deployed simultaneously that don’t often overlap so harmoniously. In death metal of this classicist a vintage, the buzzsaw pummel and chug is well-worn and broken in like an old leather armchair. Plenty of bands temper that brutality with searching, sonorously clean guitar leads – which you can find in everyone from old-school vanguarders like Edge of Sanity and new-school classics-in-the-making like Tribulation and Morbus Chron.
Vanhelgd is better than most at bridging these two approaches into an irresistible unity. It’s a disarmingly effective midwifery that lands the default atmosphere of Relics of Sulphur Salvation somewhere in the neighborhood of “contemplative carnage.” Even a song like “May the Worms…,” which blasts out with a reverbed “UGH!” and feels the most traditionally OSDM of the bunch, has got its own way of plotting a course perpendicular to the canon, eventually dragging the whole band fitfully into a unison riff; and then closing with a fetid ritardando.
The record actually gets faster, more inventive, and more pissed off as it goes along, culminating in the unstoppable one-two of the closing duo: “Sirens of Lampudesa,” which rampages diversely and closes with fittingly eerie piano, and “Cure Us from Life,” which lunges with a d-beat fervor that would have sounded tired if it had occurred much earlier in the record. Deployed strategically – and minimally – here, though, its calculated impact is huge.
The more I listen to Relics of Sulphur Salvation, the more it reminds me of Ondskapt’s Dödens Evangelium. Although Ondskapt’s orthodox black metal is miles away from Vanhelgd, both albums are glittering jewels of the underground precisely because of the methodically brilliant way they hew closely to the tenets of a long-established style and yet manage to blow the damn thing apart in the process. Plenty of bands privilege substance over style, and plenty of others limp through a style with no substance; it’s actually a special type of band that can make you appreciate the truly substantial elements of the style again, as if for the first time.
Vanhelgd won’t win any awards for originality. But the more you listen, the more your brain just might get rewired, such that the sense-memory of those vaunted predecessors that the band so lovingly emulates fades. Relics of Sulphur Salvation might just become your new Like an Everflowing Stream. That’s a hell of a high bar to pass, but Vanhelgd know it — Vanhelgd want it.
All our new noise should set itself such standards, just as we should refuse to lower ours.
