Album review: Blodet – Death Mother

Coming into Death Mother knowing nothing about the context in which it was made, you will be captured by its calm, icy darkness, its vast, mysterious beauty, moments of intense, low-end heaviness, and the way in which Blodet move so stealthily through their post-metal realm. Understanding the circumstances of its creation, however, this all becomes amplified and coloured by a weight of emotion that makes it even more heart rending.

Last year, the band’s guitarist Rickie Östlund died after battling cancer. Having already written a weight of material together, his bandmates elected to continue and finish what they started together in tribute. It makes what would already be a very good record into a powerful exercise in catharsis, reflection and healing.

The opening title-track perfectly balances the slow-burning bombast in its main opening riff with the sparse chill of Hilda Heller’s vocals, undulating between loud and quiet in a manner fans of Cult Of Luna and Chelsea Wolfe will find most agreeable. The Hour, meanwhile, spends minutes at a time quietly building before releasing in glorious heavy bursts, while the glassy guitar melodies of Lead Me Home make it vast without needing any heaviness at all, while on the album’s centrepiece, Within/Without, they spend a quarter of an hour playing with light and shade enough to make an album in itself.

It finishes with the instrumental 93-22 (the years of Rickie’s life), an energised post-punk climax in which words are unnecessary. It finishes an album dealing with such a loss as Blodet have had the bad luck to have to face on a triumphant note; not weighed down in darkness, but as a brilliant, likeable, enlivening salute to an absent friend, as much comfort as it is often joyous.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: A.A. Williams, Chrch, Cult Of Luna

Death Mother is out now via Church Road