Surprise in music is a tricky quality. While exhilarating when done right, too many compositional heel turns or seemingly random genre-bends can lead to a baffling or incongruous listening experience. When attempting to surprise the listener, the balance needs to be just right, and there is no formula considering an audience's diverging frame of reference. Within my frame of reference, Brotthogg offer exactly the right amount of surprise in their compositions to elicit exclamations of delight, while remaining firmly rooted in a familiar soundscape of black metal’s frosty forests, and have dropped a wonderfully spooky, serrated and hooky tapestry of sticky black metal songs with Ved Veis Ende.
Sonically situated somewhere between Ashen Horde and In Aphelion, these Norwegians submit an offering of seven razor-sharp tracks at a lean and mean 43 minutes. What continuously impresses about Brotthogg is their ability to write winding, spellbinding and whimsical riffs that walk cross-cutting tightropes of spooky and whimsical, unexpected and hooky, dissonant and melodic. Balanced on this acrobat’s spider web, these songs ensnare their willing prey before the spider of replayability sinks in its hooky, venomous fangs.
Ved Veis Ende takes a little to get fully going, with opening track “Fram Kryp Fanden” clearly setting the stage but failing to really ensnare the listener. As “I Daudastund” unspools, Brotthogg get ready to pounce, baring the first wonderful, swirling riff in the album's arsenal. As evident on most tracks, Brothogg have a knack for unleashing a wonderful, undulating riff somewhere in the first third of a track, and then slowly uncoiling it throughout the song, returning to similar motif while delightfully warping and twisting it with every ensnaring iteration. “I Vanvittens Vold”, with its whirling, speedy wizardry interspersed with noir-jazz tinged guitar pyrotechnics shows the success of this formula, and the triumphant and vicious “Skarpretter” offers my favorite example of what carnage the band can unleash, by introducing a scything, whirling, razory riff around the two-minute mark that eerily saws its way into mood and memory.
There are a few less memorable moments where Brothhogg slow down proceedings and leans into a dramatic, key-embellished atmosphere. This works especially well on the powerful closing track “Mare”, which mixes these eerie atmospherics with another razor whirlwind of a riff. “Pesta” also works quite well as a slow, bombastic breather in between the faster onslaughts, and includes what I think is a horn section, but suffers from a comparative lack of hooky highlights. “I Djupet” also has some very cool drum patterns and favorably reminds me of a blackened Svavelvinter it drags on a bit towards the end, but its length and the fact that tracks can bleed into each other does it no favors in the memorability department.
Aside from these few minor points of criticism, Ved Veis Ende is carried not just by the quality of it’s riffs and composition, but also by its surprisingly emotive solo work provided by Stephen Carlson, which shine especially bright on the smoky, svelte fretboard acrobatics of “I Vadvittens Vold” and “Mare”, and the gratuitous but satisfying ending to “Pesta”. All other instruments, lyrics and writing are credited to Kristian Larssen Moen, laying the groundwork for some often unhinged, mad-preacher vocal style of Jonas Moen and Craig Furunes that encroached on al-Namrood teritory, and can only be commended for the intricate lattice of twists and turns that is Ved Veis Ende. Step into their web, you won't regret it.