Album Review : Vildhjarta – Masstaden
Hello Ladies and Djent-lemen, Thall. And now you must be thinking what is Thall. I have read almost a hundred threads to know what it means and I speculate so have you, but in the end it comes out to be that Thall is just Thall. It has no specific definition. Just another meaningless word coined by Vildhjarta. Coming to Vildhjarta, they are a band from Sweden (not surprising) with just 17000 followers on Facebook. They came into the Djent scene in the late 2000s and are now said to be the Big Four of Djent which include mighty Tesseract, Periphery and Uneven Structure. They released their first EP, Omnilash in 2009 independently and with their growing popularity, they are now signed to Century Media Records.
Vildhjarta released their full length album ‘Masstaden’ via the same record on 28th November. According to the band, ‘Masstaden’ is an album that “tells the tale of a hidden and isolated town, narrated in a classic fable manner”. Also the sources of inspiration include the Jungle Book and Final Fantasy VII which I find is quiet true as the fable-ish elements can be seen on the cover art.
When I first heard they were coming up with their album I wasn’t so exited about it though ‘Shiver’ was one of my favorite songs. They were a Meshuggah rip-off band to me. But not anymore. When I heard their first track ”Shadow”, I was blown away. The ambient intro of the song converging into the hardcore groovy sound. There are pretty awesome breakdowns in the album. Specially the part when you can hear the raindrops falling after the breakdown and then, heaviness strikes again. Whatta start.
The second song ”Dagger’‘ starts in a somewhat same manner. Ambient to heavy transition. The video for this song was released yesterday which you can check out below. Pretty impressive. The special part in this song is where the Djent elements are, which are mostly after the ambient breaks and the whisper-ish vocals . Three guitars beautifully carving this song.
The third song from this album is the one I have covered, ”The Eternal Monk”. This song has such a mind-blowing bassline with off-time beats and psychedelic voices on the background. There is an empeiness in this track at some points. If they were covered, It would have made it more crashy. ”Benblast” I dont know what that means or even if it has a meaning but the track is quiet interesting. With some generic sounds, it progresses till the double bass blows you off your ass. Hats off to the drummer. The song ends with screeches and crying voices and the bends on the guitars. Perfect!
”Ostpeppar”, my ringtone; is a one minute ambient filling with some rain in the background that goes into djent as it progresses and paves the way for my favorite track ”Traces”. There is one peculiar thing about this album. Every song starts from ambiet sounds and goes into growls, but not this track. It starts in the hardest way you can imagine. And ends up into Clean vocals. Splendid work on this one. There is a long acoustic peice in this one which is spectacular. The tone is perfect. Just the way it should be. But looking at all the previous tracks, I can say that their tone and patches till now, have been absolutely great. Even the delays are in pure shape.”Phobon Nika”, This is a lovely instrumental track, even easy listeners can go for it. There are some computerised or maybe DJ-ish effects, in fact it starts with the same. Distortion enters for sometime but it does not hit you, even though the tone is pure badass shit. Till this point the album is interesting but it gets pretty monotonous after this.
”Masstadens Nationalsang” is the next track which is also an instrumental, I wont recommend this. A one minute thingy that could have been removed. There was no need for this. The first flaw in the album.”When No One Walks With You” is the track the blooming vocalists would want to hear. The only special thing on this are the vocals. You can now actually figure out that there are two vocalists. Badass stuff people. ”All these feelings”. Post- Hardcore is what I would call it. There were very less Djent elements that i could find in this song. But it is hard. Hard as a rock. You could actually break your neck on this one, six minutes long, so Beware. The end on the retrospect is quiet simple and Harmonic. A great composition. ”Nojja”, This is the part where I got bored after 45 minutes of madness. It was rather the same or atleast it felt like. But your eargasm starts again when you find out that only tracks are left. Nothing special about”Deceit” except the bassline that comes in after the breakdown. Splendid tone.
So here we are at the Thirteenth and the last track, ”The Lone Deranger”. I speculated it would be another one, completely filled with distortion and I was..wrong. Acoustic start. What a beautiful composition. It actually relaxes all your nerves and prepares you for your hardest encaounter. The moment distortion enters, You go mad, at least I did. Heavy vocals which then progress into amient delay-ish tone with amazing bass work towards the end. What an amazing ending to an amazing album. You dont feel anything after this song. It moves your ass to some supernatural place.
This is what Vildhjarta is people. Awesome-ness. If you think it will be the same as Omnilash, you are wrong. It is something else. It has Progressions, Djent, Hardcore, Groove and even Deathcore elements. It is one of the best Djent albums I’ve heard which will be talked upon with Obzen, One and Silhouttes. Go get a copy and feel it yourself. No regrets, not anywhere around here.
