Album Review: Gaahls Wyrd – Braiding the Stories
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
It’s probably not a label he wears voluntarily, but Kristian Eivind Espedal - aka Gaahl – is one of Black Metal’s most recognisable faces; and one of the genres most innovative thinkers and creators. Starting in Trelldom in 1994 – a project which still occupies his time – before joining the legendary Gorgoroth, fronted them for eight-years and vocalising some of there most ambitious albums, particularly Twilight of the Idols and Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam. Legal shenanigans lead to the formation of God Seed with bassist King ov Hell and the I Begin album in 2012 which, to be honest, I still have on regular rotation to this day.
Following the break-up of God Seed and a period with Wardruna, Gaahl formed WYRD in September 2015, making their live debut mere months later. Their debut full-length appeared in 2019: GastiR – Ghosts Invited, with The Humming Mountain, an EP, arriving in 2021.
The winners of Norwegian Grammys, Gaahl’s WYRD return after a four-year absence with a new and ambitious sophomore full-length: Braiding the Stories; nine compositions that cover a breadth of ideas and stylistic approaches.
Whether you would call this album Black Metal would very mush depend on your personal definition of the term. There are places here where a narrow, second-wave, definition would certainly suffice. Time and Timeless Timeline, one of the songs selected for a single release, certainly fits the scope of Gaahl’s better-known work. Mid-tempo blasts and crunchy, dirty riffing, with a whiplash ending, tick those boxes; Root the Will goes in the same direction, though has a spacey solo and a contemplative close.
Another single, And the Now, shows Gaahl is not afraid to flex those creative muscles, incorporating gothic vocals and a Pink Floyd-vibe during some of the more progressive passages. He’s a man not hampered by his personal history but looks to ancient rhythms through dissonance and resolve. Visions and Time echoes ideas and motifs you’d usually expect to hear on a Wardruna record as it looks to the ancient past and old-world beats.
Three brief interlude passages act as transitional moments across Braiding the Stories. The Dream employs echoes and reverberation, creating an ethereal and otherworldly atmosphere before the album’s even begun; Voices in My Head is built on simple, clean guitars and whispered voices, before something ominous approaches; yet Through the Veil, becoming the extended intro to Vision and Time, is all about the unsettling guitar that evokes Sunn’s It Took the Night to Believe.
Bookending the record – The Dream notwithstanding – are Braiding the Stories’ signature pieces. Both are post-seven-minute compositions, and both complex expositions of the record’s nature. Third of the single releases is the title track, opening with a pseudo-Burzum echo, it introduces us to an oppressive mood. Gothic, symphonic and even ambient at times, with vocals sitting quite low in the mix, it foreshadows the oncoming folky, ancient and progressive elements we’ll meet on this strange journey. At times akin to Heilung, there is no Satan worshipping to be heard among these epic strains.
Closer, Following Starlight, leans into the post rock territory through its hooky beats and clean guitar sound, though there is an unmistakeably Eighties gothic element, almost Sisters of Mercy, in the airy spaciousness of the tune.
The assembled musicians expertly create Gaahl’s vision through the restrained rhythms of Andreas Salbu and drummer, Kevin Kvåle, while the guitars of Ole Walaunet bring joy and fear in equal measure.
It’s interesting to note the use of the ethereal and the formless in Braiding the Stories’ track listing. Concepts like “stories”, “dreams” and “visions” all have an abstraction; “time” is simply a name we give to mark atrophy, “now” is so fleeting it cannot be considered as it immediately becomes the past. All these concepts and ideas are unpacked across Braiding the Stories, ideas that reject definition as much as they reject form.
And it’s this that makes Gaahl’s WYRD’s new record something that has a high level of re-listenability as it’ll lodge itself in your mind from the outset.
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