The Crypts of the Unknown harbors many festered treasures. Have you ever come across an album that you enjoy, but seemingly no other human in existence knows about it? Or maybe an album that ticks all the boxes in a style that doesn’t get a lot of love? Oh, and of course, you’ve found this album long after it would have mattered to help the band spread the word… or perhaps it’s just your dirty little secret…
Whatever the case, we here at Goat Review prefer to air our loves to the world, to open the gates of our corroded Crypts to the masses. Today, join us as Metalligator reminisces on Bergraven’s 2019 release Det Framlidna Minnet. It may not be perfect, but how would you know?
Skåne is the Texas of Sweden. At least, the comparison holds when it comes to the dialects. As a native, the drawled speech is one of the things that initially hooked me in with Bergraven‘s Det Framlidna Minnet (The Deceased Memory). I was interested in how the band would handle black metal with a vocal accent that many who understand the language could find unintentionally funny, being a middle ground between Swedish and Danish (tons of jokes exist in the Nordic countries about their “dumb” neighbors). The joke’s on me, however, as Det Framlidna Minnet proved to be one of the more interesting black metal albums I have heard, and little did I know that it would keep growing on me for years. Existing in the same range of black metal as countrymen Shining, Malmö’s Bergraven are similarly progressive while leaning more into jazz as a tool. This is noticeable in cuts like “Den följesamma plågan” (The accompanying torment), which is screamed in with a desperate saxophone, alternating this desperate mood with upbeat punk-influenced drums and an almost danceable refrain. But for how upbeat and circus-like the melodic themes in Det Framlidna Minnet get, the music never loses sight on the misery of the vocals and it’s at times hard to believe how well these moments fit in with songs as eerie as the Angelo Badalamenti-like “Leendet av hans verk” (The leer of his work). This song opens with glass harp-sounds coupled with a dreamy saxophone segment that could have fit one of the black lodge-scenes in Twin Peaks, before launching into furious black metal.
For all of the seemingly random shit that Bergraven throw at the wall, it comes together beautifully. Yet the album isn’t immediate, which might explain the scant impact it made on release. Permeating most of the tracks are downcast acoustic guitar moments that recall the compositional style of Opeth — emotional compositions that seep in slowly, with lyrics that contemplate the fleeting nature of memories and desperation of holding on to life’s fickle promises. There is something distinctly Swedish about the sorrow on display here. Some more immediate meloblack moments exist here and there, like “Den dödes stigar” (Trails of the dead), yet even these feature things like a harmonica and samples of falling pieces of broken glass. Most of the album takes time to sink in because it is detailed while also having a lot of sudden transitions where it goes off on a gloomy tangent before suddenly waking up with a figurative shriek. This fleeting unpredictability is one of the Det Framlidna Minnet‘s shinning lights, as it allows its harshest and most emotional moments to hit harder. Creative, uncompromisingly musical and unflinchingly naked in emotional expression, it delivers what I want in black metal. Visit Malmö for the exotic variants of kebabtallrik, stay for the avant-garde black metal no one has heard.
