Artists make art. They don’t wait for the right time, the right people, or the right moment. It’s a drive, a need that doesn’t listen to the voices say you need this tool or this producer or this label. You’re compelled, for no other reason than there’s this thing in you that has to get out. If you know you know, right? And so Carl Skildum, in between moments with his various other metal projects found some downtime and just…created. The result is, unsurprisingly, another fantastic sculpture of modern black metal in the form of Skjolden. What is surprising though is the amount of sly wit to be found in the wonderfully named Insouciant Metaphysical Granduer, created out of necessity but with a wagging tongue and winking eye behind the mountains of layered guitars and black metal bite.

Written and recorded solely by Skildum, the name Skjolden comes from the Norwegian town his ancestors came from, mistakenly taken as their surname upon arriving in America and gloriously butchered into the spelling we now know adorning some of the best black metal of the last decade. When the promo came in I jumped because a) it was a Carl Skildum project, and having covered Inexorum’s debut only to be beaten to the punch for the follow-up there was no way I was going to let someone else take the reins, but more importantly b) that title. There’s probably dozens if not hundreds of metal albums with some variation of “metaphysical” in it, and the “grandeur” part feels like a no-brainer if you’re shooting for a certain vibe.

But “Insouciant”? That’s someone clearly letting a bit of the air out of the pomp and pageantry of the genre, and a further glance into song titles like “The Fever Swamp of Magickal Thought” (Joan Didion is rolling in her grave…in laughter) and “Can’t Kill My Love” betray a sly wit that knows the form and function of black metal enough to let the smirk through. Skildum knows exactly how to gently poke fun even as musically this is an absolute killer set of tunes, thick and regal with everything you want, indulgent with his particular passions – there is a lot of keyboard spread throughout Insouciant Metaphysical Grandeur – but always with an eye to cut clear with his expansive vision.

That eye, or ear to be more specific, is still honed to a razor’s edge, and the opening moments of “In Resplendent Obscurity” is awash in thick tremolo riffing, lots of cymbal work adding a sharpness to the drumming and the keyboards at first laying back to add extra depth to the soundscape before jumping to the front to accentuate the melodies. The aforementioned “The Fever Swamp of Magickal Thought” has a lower, more ominous mood in its d-beat salvo and triplet work before going thoroughly majestic in its verses, while the title track pulls back just enough to allow the heavy metal inhabiting Skildum’s more recent output to take center stage among the more traditional black metal tenants. I love the shift in tempo the song takes, and that extra breath of air makes it even more metal, if that makes sense.

I know I was personally a little more lukewarm on Majesties and their take on the burgeoning wave of Swedish death metal (a lot of other people LOVED it here), but there are moments on “Keeper of the Silent Heart” and closer “Narthex Terminus” that gives my ears the homage I was looking for in that album without sounding like an attempt at carbon copying. Insouciant Metaphysical Grandeur may have been born out of a moment of stillness, but I suspect we would have gotten it one way or another.

Artists make art.

— Chris

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Insouciant Metaphysical Grandeur will be available June 20 independently. For more information on Skjolden, check out all of Carl’s other awesome projects like Inexorum, Majesties, and Antiverse.