What better analogy is there for a Scandinavian folk metal album than a righteous longship, moving towards its destination with poise, grandeur, and a dwarvish amount of work? Whatever you might think of viking clichés, I’m partial to the analogy with regard to Vintersorg’s latest voyaging full-length Vattenkrafternas Spel. While the title’s translation—"The Play of Water Powers"—points to a much more modernised wrangling of waters, envisioning the album as a longship might allow for a pleasant way to read what does, and unfortunately more so what doesn’t, work about this album.
As valiant rowers struggle to plow the ship through odd, uniform and wall-shaped waves, I can’t help but notice their skilled and experienced efforts are impeded by an unfortunately tight spread of oarlocks, and the strange layering that by design seems to make their hard work less effective. While the drummer keeps his crewmen in time pounds away with skill and fervor, the ship's odd design further adds to the chaos by rendering his guiding thumps and cresting pleas for speed oddly muffled and devoid of the energy they should affect upon the rowers.
Whenever Captain Andreas Hedlund uses his voice to inspire valor in his swashbuckling subordinates, the volume and dominance of hidelivery is so overpowering that they lose sense of the drumming. Often the vocal melodies are not to my liking, and seem to clash with Hedlund’s particular style. While some of the brassy symphonics add flair and vigor to the proceedings, the flute that on many a track pops its head above the chop like a half-drowned sea serpent somehow sounds both washed out and muffled and yet still penetrates the surrounding soundscape in an unfortunately cacophonous manner.
Somewhere behind the ship, a couple of wayward axemen seem to be drowning, and the whistle of the wind, unfortunately not a usable one for sailing, rushes through an odd assortment of sonorous pipes which add bombast to the ships approach and surely manage to inspire awe in some it approaches. They also seem to slow the ship down, and add to its already ungainly struggle through the blocky chop. For every glorious moment like the climax of “Störtsjö”, the Amorphis-leaning guitar work of “Malströmsbrus”, the gorgeous into to “Krafkällan” or the chorus of “Regnskuggans Rike”, there are more that rub me very much the wrong way.
I level these criticisms with a heavily hammered heart, but most of them can be attributed to the album’s very loud production job (which has been a longer-standing issue with Vintersorg, as far as I’m aware). The sound is criminally brick-walled, which I find especially egregious with music like this that benefits so greatly from rich textures and dynamics in all its instruments. The vocals are also very high in the mix, which probably adds to their often overbearing nature. Meanwhile the drums lack oomph, the guitars are often left sounding toothless in the busier sections, not to mention the poor bass.
These production issues are compounded by the album’s lack of compositional breathing room. Where predecessor Til Fjalls Del II (2017) gave room for atmosphere and more acoustic sections, Vattenkrafternas Spel overcrowded the ship and created an unexpectedly cumbersome vessel. Layering cleans vocals over blast beats, guitars and symphonics is a risky endeavor even with spacier production, and it really shows here. I’ve greatly enjoyed Hedlund's past work in both this band and Borknagar, and this latest, long-awaited opus certainly has it’s moments of chest-thumping epicness, but they largely feel thin and stretched, like butter spread over too much knäckebröd. Let's hope they set a course for different waters on their next outing.