Some albums are never late, nor are they early, but arrive precisely when they are meant to. Norway’s Vemod are kicking off 2024 in ethereal style with their first album in 12 years, The Deepening — a beautiful, genre-transcending exercise in atmosphere that sees the band continuing to weave threads first sewn on their debut in ways both familiar and unexpected, with a grander sound and beefed-up songwriting chops to match. The wait may have been long, but the result is oh so worth it.

I was relatively late to the party, but Vemod’s 2012 debut Venter på stormene is an album that’s provided me a lot of comfort over the past few years. To my ears it sounds like a missing bridge between Ulver’s opus Bergtatt and a certain brand of Eastern European atmoblack, slightly raw and repetitive but with an airy quality (and extended moments of ambience) that made it feel like something else entirely. Needless to say I was very excited to see how they’d follow up, and The Deepening ends up being exactly what I’ve wanted from the band. Vemod ostensibly check all the boxes of an atmospheric black metal act — walls of chords forming the backbone of their riffs, harsh vocals, and plenty of blast beats — but what makes the album so intriguing is their magical ability to transform these genre tropes into something else entirely.

The greatest asset in Vemod’s toolkit this time around is perhaps the production; gone is the rawness of the debut and the general bite you’d expect of black metal, instead replaced by a distinctively comfy softness from the guitars down to the prominent bass and even the snare, devoid of that signature piercing quality you see in most other black metal (even when the blast beats are happening). The contrast between throaty rasps and ethereal clean vocals, as well as bright keyboards brought in at just the right moments serve to differentiate their sound from the past as well. Vemod have described themselves as “dark ethereal metal” and “darkgaze metal,” and they certainly aren’t overselling themselves there; just listen to the second half of single “Der guder dør” heralded by choir and martial drums, a stark, non-metallic contrast to what preceded it.

Production aside, on a compositional level Vemod have greatly improved in their ability to construct and develop an ebb and flow within each song. Clean, lilting guitar leads often accompany even the heavier moments like on the majority of “True North Beckons,” perhaps the most metal song on the album — yet even this track recedes into a soft interlude before it’s blast-led conclusion. Blackgaze/post-black devotees may find many of the songwriting techniques on The Deepening to be well-worn ground at this point, but as someone who hasn’t really kept up with these subgenres for a while it’s a return just as refreshing as the band’s itself.

Vemod still have some interesting tricks to play with their own sound however, the (mostly) instrumental “Inn i lysende natt” being the biggest surprise. Built around a single reverb-laden riff, clean chords echo throughout the track and serve to give it an almost American Western-sounding feel, though that could just be my own temporal bias with the release of Wayfarer’s American Gothic happening not long ago. The more liberal use of multilayered clean vocals are another welcome addition to the band’s sound as well, used to beautiful effect on the closing title track. Venter på stormene dedicated a whole 13 minutes to an ambient track, whereas here the ambience is limited to merely a couple interlude tracks and the outro of “The Deepening” — the band could’ve opted for some sort of crescendo to a intense blackened blast beat finale, but instead the album drifts off into a calm nothingness.

The Deepening doesn’t do much to change the game within this style of metal, but it doesn’t need to. This album demonstrates just how the band haven’t lost a single step in the past 12 years, but rather spent that time carefully honing their sound into something new (for them) without losing sight of what made their debut great in the first place. Whether you’re seeking out the first great black metal album of 2024 or itching for something softer after the year of tremendous metal albums that was 2023, Vemod have you covered.

— Colin

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The Deepening will be available January 19 via Prophecy Productions. For more information on Vemod, check out their Facebook and Instagram pages.