Rating: 9.5/10
Release: 30 May 2025
Label: Independent

“In 2013 Vanvidd was founded with a grand vision of creating a new kind of Norwegian metal. The idea behind the band was to combine the no-nonsense black metal of the 90s with traditional folk music in a synthesis where pleasant, uptempo folk met with frostbitten, dark riffs with folklore and fairytales as its main thematic focus.”
Well, did they live up to these great expectations. They’re back with a new album ‘Avlivsritualer’ and you better be prepared for some greatness…
This journey starts in ‘Mareheim’, and this is what you can expect from Vanvidd, at the end of the song you feel bruised, because you’re thrown forth and back between harsh chaos en nice riffs, almost lovely pieces of music and the messiest moshpit you’ve ever been in. Sometimes you can take a deep breath and just when you think you can calm down, you feel you find yourself in a are where trolls are throwing rocks all over the place.
At the end of the song you’re wondering “what haven’t I heard”. Well you get the answer immediately in the second track ‘Burning Oceans’. The song breaths a cinematic approach, but the cinematic sounds are completed with harsh vocals and instrument, letting you feel lost in a unknown world.
Don’t you dare to think that’s just like Finntroll, like you can hear Trollfest influences in the ‘Deepen These Wounds’, it’s all just influences. Vanvidd clearly listened to bands like Finntroll, Trollfest, Moonsorrow, Månegarm and more of these kind of bands, but they managed to create their own sound out of this.
And so they go on with great track which are all quite different, but always so Vanvidd. They’re not scared of more lovely intermezzos in ‘Liktorven’. And to follow that with cinematic sounds altered with a harsh desolate soundscaping in ‘Paling Lore’.
What are you thing when I say death rituals? You will hear all of that in ‘Avlivsritualer’.
Topped off with ‘Gemseler’ this album is loaded with nice tracks which will leave you wondering what you were listening to. And you will press “play” again and again and again.

Vanvidd proves the tag “unsigned” doesn’t say anything about the quality of a band. They delivered a great album with ‘Avlivsritualer’, diverse, mad, harsh and much more or… simply brilliant.

Tracklist

1. Mareheim
2. Burning Oceans
3. Deepen These Wounds
4. Liktorven
5. Paling Lore
6. Avlivsritualer
7. Glemselen