Graveland was the most high spirited of the many bands who took the pagan warfare theme as its core inspiration. While displaying bombastic pretensions from the beginning and by the very nature of the themes, the band’s earlier efforts were still aesthetically within the framework of raw black metal, still to manifest the higher melodicism and more pronounced folk influences that would go on to become a staple of their sound. By analysing one of these earlier records, however, we can thus testify to a band that pushes the straightforward building blocks they work with to their utmost expressive power.
The song starts with a ponderous riff whose prime matter (an A power chord and augmented triad) grants it a density proper to a mighty overture as intended; this is in turn relieved by the lower pitched B flat that complements it. The relationship between these sections lays the foundation for the tension through which the rest of the song is built: the next riff takes the form of a D power chord followed by A flat, and then using two other power chords one half step lower. The effect is that of the first riff’s duality giving away the “meme” that will shape the rest of the song’s dynamics, providing a backbone of cohesion while allowing for a sense of progress and change.
These first riffs intercalate while accompanying synths accentuate the differences in pitch, bringing a continuity between the more triumphant and sombre moods, totally appropriate for a thematic context like this. The lyrics juxtapose the excitement and ecstasy of the pagan awakening with the dark and confrontational imagery associated with occultism and witchcraft, as common for black metal at the time. As we can see, although the seeds are already planted, Rob Darken hasn’t yet fully committed to the celebratory praise of the Wotan’s Wild Hunt and its glories, which will dominate the lyrical content on future albums where the music also adopts a correspondingly more “Wagnerian” disposition.
A slower section interrupts the vicious pagan crusade with impactful power chords that provide some rhythmic variation before resolving the previous developments through a synthesis: the “dual” format of the first riffs is preserved, but each of the halves is expanded by adopting other parts, as if the longer riffs, which have essentially provided an “ambience” function until now, had been broken down and melded together to absorve the momentum of the previous sections. After the insistent repetition of the simpler, separated riffs, their conjoined form intuitively feels more developed, working as a more dynamic and energetic summation of the song’s several phrases.
Later albums by Graveland gradually reap the benefits of improved musicianship, with a focus on the contrast between atonal assaulting and more melodic sections and an increasingly robust sense of the epic and bombastic through the synth work and folkloric music elements. However, the dynamics we’ve just highlighted from this earlier song form the compositional basis of what Graveland would go on to produce throughout its accomplished career, proving once more the expressive potential of a format like black metal, even in its relatively nascent forms.
