KVAD
Cold & Dark, as Life

Hailing from Norway, KVAD indeed performs black metal exclusively in the ancient Nordic tradition. The band is yet another project of the ever-prolific Peregrinus, who numbers the likes of UNHOLY CRAFT, SOLUS GRIEF, Hjemsøkt, Darkest Bethlehem, and Praefuro among his current endeavors. Then a duo, in 2022, KVAD released the Invocations EP and Cold & Dark, As Life debut album in quick succession, and now Peregrinus continues to strike while the burning church is hot with their second album, So Old.

On one hand, So Old is aptly titled: the album begins with a desolate melancholy of what once was, and then the blizzard of distortion leads into a cryogenic grimness not unlike mid-'90s Gorgoroth, particularly the hackle-raising, Hat-esque screams of Peregrinus. And so KVAD follows this trajectory for a good deal of the album...but their songwriting unfolds, fever-dreaming into strange shapes not found among the ashes of those churches. While never dissonant per se, that blizzard of riffing soon compounds into a fury/flurry backed by Peregrinus' brisk-yet-building drums; it's a howling hysteria that's not altogether untuneful, and its slipstreaming vortex suggests the superlative late '90s psychedelia of Svest and Weakling. But, much as he does with his other projects, Peregrinus is not one to be (exclusively) pinned down to one specific style, and possesses the songwriting nous to turn these classics-minded creations into ones respectably modern. So Old, and yet so alive!