Tryglav - Night of Whispering Souls

Night of Glistening Poles

One thing that kinda bothers me right off the bat about Tryglav here isn't really a problem as much as it's a curiosity.  This is the solo project of one Boris Behara, who handles all of the instruments except the vocals, who are apparently handled on this release by the dude from Black Cult.  And I mean... that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that considering the dude is clearly a talented multi-instrumentalist so there's no need for him to stretch himself thin in an area he's not comfortable with (it's common to see one or two man bands where one guy handles everything except the drums, for example, and hell, Anaal Nathrakh uses this exact setup).  The thing that bugs me about this is... well clearly the main guy is front and center at all times, and he does apparently play live, though when he does he gets four anonymous cronies to don plague doctor getups to round out the band.  But like... what the fuck does he do?  He's never been in a band before, I have no idea what his main instrument is.  If he's not the vocalist then wouldn't that just look weird as hell to have a bunch of masked and robed creatures except for one random guitarist or something?  And if he is the vocalist live, then why not just do it on record?  I know this is all ultimately pointless in the end, but once I had learned that this was the composition of the band, I just couldn't let it go.  Bro let it bake for a little while longer, if you weren't ready to record the vocals, just put it off until you are, nobody is rushing you!

Anyway, that's all periphery shit that doesn't really matter.  What truly matters here is the music itself, and I think Tryglav is very solid.  Across the seven tracks, there is a common thruline of heavy melody, particularly in the vein of Swedish black metal from the second wave like Marduk and Dark Funeral.  Good chunks of the album are very blast-happy and loaded with melodic tremolo lines.  That's probably the simplest way to describe this, meloblack run through a couple of light filters, but that'd be selling it short.  There are a surprising amount of ideas on display for a mere seven tracks from a debut solo artist here.  The opening track, "Under My Skin" is fiery as hell, with a brutal underpinning that likens it more to war metal or a particularly nasty 1349 track than anything else, while "Deadline" throws in some really warm riffs/melodies and more laid back drumming, hearkening back to the sunny Hellenic scene, and then "Creatures of the Night" chucks some straight up hard rock influence to the forefront, creating something that a lot of reviewers are comparing to Lordi but that's because everybody but me is fucking lazy and can't look past lyrical themes.  Those slightly unorthodox tracks are the real reason Night of Whispering Souls stands out to me.  That's not to say the title track or "Werewolf" aren't great emulations of Dissection and Dark Funeral or anything, because they are, but blastastic meloblack is a really easy genre to do so it's refreshing to hear somebody take some pointed risks with it.

So it pretty much follows a set formula, with the odd tracks being the more adventurous slow ones with more conventional rock drumming (apart from the opener, which is the most brutal track by a long shot) and the even tracks being the more traditional meloblack affairs, so you'd think it'd be uneven and flip-floppy, but really it just keeps the album from getting dull since each new track is going to throw a new idea at you.  The best of each world is probably "Werewolf" and "Deadline", for my money, but really every song here is at the very least good.  Though there aren't any highlights that completely blow my socks off, I do find myself returning to this fairly often, so it's doing something right.


RATING: 80%