We had a fair idea that when Gaahl revived Trelldom and released ...By the Shadows... in 2024, 17 years after the album Til Minne..., it wasn’t to pick up where his project left us, nor to take us back to the 90s. As we have come to notice over the last decade or so, particularly in Gaahls Wyrd, Kristian Eivind Espedal is not one to wallow in nostalgia, let alone rest on his laurels: for him, creation is a sincere, almost mystical process that cannot be achieved through lazy repetition. We know it in advance: ...by the word... will be an album as unpredictable as it is thrilling, one we are about to explore with the same excitement as that felt before losing oneself in the fog. Trelldom fans, however, can always cling to one constant: the three dots in the album titles will then serve them, like Tom Thumb’s pebbles, to find their way through the mist!
Gaahl has kept the same line-up as on the previous album, ...By the Shadows..., adding only bassist Eirik Øien to the line-up. The ingredients are therefore similar to those of the previous album, as can be heard right from When This Was Young: unpredictable rhythms, ghostly brass, a clear voice acting as a guide or narrator... one can nevertheless assume that, over time, each member now dares to bring a little more of their own touch of madness, expressing their desires, for a more profound result. Trelldom still sounds mystical and psychedelic and cultivates an occult aura, right down to their press releases, which state that the band "do neither comment on their music nor explain their art"! Let us then leave the realm of reason behind and lose ourselves in a hallucinatory sensory labyrinth...
Whilst terms like ‘avant-garde’ might seem off-putting and give the impression of something cold, cerebral and a touch pretentious, that is certainly not the case here. Admittedly, Trelldom experiments and tends to rub us up the wrong way, but it also manages to maintain a sense of grandeur, a solemnity that owes as much to the heavy rhythms as to Gaahl’s vocal performance—ceremonious, imposing and theatrical, exuding a kind of sacred authority. We slip out of time, contemplating a vision of black metal that is both far removed from what we know yet, paradoxically, strangely faithful to the original ethos: breaking free from the rules to offer something dark, where dissonance reigns and the listener is jolted through an oppressive and mysterious sonic underworld with gothic atmospheres. Just listen to The Word Choose to Vanish and its snarling riffs to see for yourself!
Saxophone, organ, clarinet and mandolin all contribute to this desolate soundscape, opening up a world of possibilities with incredible flair (This Moment the Life of a Memory), not to mention a touch of abyssal grandiloquence. Gaahl embodies several voices—forgotten, menacing, guardians of dark secrets held within words that are, too, forgotten. Each track can thus be seen as a spell, a story whispered deep within a cave, often verging on hypnotic incantation (Folding the Mind). With an approach that ultimately draws as much from jazz and progressive rock as from extreme metal, Trelldom imbues its ghosts with an organic quality and gives free rein to its eccentricities with an appetite for playfulness and experimentation that is as delightful as it is refreshing, yet never neglects poetry or furious assaults. Gaahl (accompanied by his bandmates), with his stern and slightly sulky air, confirms his status as extreme metal’s most fascinating mad scientist!
