Rating: 9.5/10
Release:13 October 2023
Label: Lupus Lounge

The Icelandic band Fortið are back with their seventh album titled “Narkissos”. With this seventh album, while not denying their purely Nordic lyrics, the Icelanders face in this seventh album the Greek myth of Narcissus, renewing the concept describing the obsession for themselves, and using it to narrate the deeds of a young and violent person who manipulates others eventually revealing his own paranoid and self-pity nature that will lead him to die in a state of loneliness and abandonment. A concept of this type can only have a full and epic soundtrack, and there is no lack of this characteristic in the music of Fortið, which confirm the paths taken in the last albums and, indeed, gradually moving away from the “simple” death black metal that characterized them, completely embracing an extreme all-out metal. This record in fact reveals a new melodic component for the duration that blends well with the often-melancholic constructions present in this album. In “Narkissos” we are therefore in front of a heavy metal well tied to viking metal, extreme but never completely blinded by anger as for example heard in a song like “Tìmans Ör” playing on the piano-forte dichotomy.

Musically speaking, while we’re listening to “Narkissos” some names like Borknagar, In Vain, Bathory and Insomnium may come to mind. About Insomnium Niilo Servänen is a guest on the album and you can hear him on the title track “Narkissos”, which mixes a sulphureous and inhospitable black with a guitar that creates a series of virtuoso solos. This is because in this seventh album by Fortíð there is a feeling of renewal in the air that does not forget sharp accelerations and tight riffing, but it’s always inside a “sound circle” more focused on narrating dramatically the deeds of the protagonist of this record. “Uppskera” for example, contains all the elements that characterize this album of Fortið, that have opened their sound to technical evolutions and range from death, trash but also to the classic heavy metal. “Illt skal með illu gjalda”, a track that is also home to Ģystein Hansen (former band member) with his acoustic guitar, but instead shows a rather eclectic nature (albeit with feet firmly planted on the ground), balancing also in the vocal test as much a poisonous Screaming as an evocative clean singing. In the final track “Við dauðans dyr” emerges a very enjoyable symphonic black metal, which differs from the fierce “Tímans Ör”, which is also very linked to an ancestral black metal that makes it perhaps the best track of the album.

In conclusion, with “Narkissos” the Fortið have managed to resume an event of Greek mythology, a mythology very far from theirs, and made it a much more modern story, in which the protagonist continues towards the obvious manifestation of his nature, of his becoming more paranoid, unstable, angry going inexorably towards a downward spiral and without end of self-pity, until his oldness, which will presents a heavy bill called loneliness, for a person who has now been removed from everyone for a very long time. In this context it becomes very suggestive fits perfectly what I would define as the musical assault of the Icelandic band, which draws on the sounds of black metal and various heavy genres, here presence without well-defined boundaries, which create a majestic musicality, rich in glory but also dark, decadent, threatening and at the same time lacerating. An album that takes its cue from multiple sources still manages to play black metal in a powerful way, continuing the line of demarcation, raising the fateful bar, perhaps giving rise to one of the best releases of the year in the extreme and, to one of Fortið’s best albums.

Tracklist

1. Narkissos 03:15
2. Drottnari 05:08
3. Vefurinn sem ég spinn 05:47
4. Uppskera 06:58
5. Þúsund þjáninga smiður 05:54
6. Rotinn arfur 06:21
7. Illt skal með illu gjalda 05:43
8. Tímans ör 06:47
9. Við dauðans dyr 07:43