This is the third album from Enevelde, a Norwegian solo black metal band.
Following on from 2020’s Enevelde and 2023’s En Gildere Død, Pandemonium delivers 38 minutes of new material from the artist behind Enevelde. It’s both an unforgiving and immersive record, one destined I fear for underground obscurity, rather than the wider acclaim it deserves.
Pandemonium is Enevelde’s most malevolent and malignant incarnation yet. It’s raw and bleak, succeeding in portraying unflinching darkness and sinister atmosphere across its full running time. This is a record where the light has been strangled and left to die in a gutter, hopeless, unloved, unnoticed.
Enevelde’s black metal is expressive and richly atmospheric. It’s the sort of album you can lose yourself in, should lose yourself in. Hypnotised by the inexorable movements of its abyssal waters, absorbed by the inscrutable ways that the songs unfold, with deep blackened grace, you find yourself surrounded by harrowing nightmares and howling corruption, yet strangely feel right where you need to be. There’s violence and aggression here, starkly rendered in brutally cold gloom, but even that is ultimately subservient to the malefic atmosphere that rules over everything with an iron fist.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Watching the artist behind Enevelde develop his art across the years has been rewarding, and I think this is my favourite outing of his yet. If you favour black metal that’s dark and malevolent, yet built with an atmospheric darkened heart, then Pandemonium is not a record you will want to miss out on.
Wonderbox Metal 