BRÆ - Av Vålnader Bortom Allt LP
Two years ago, February 2021, a mysterious entity named BRÆ burst from the void fully formed with their first full-length, A thousand ways to end it all, via AMOR FATI. While their membership was yet to be revealed, the black metal displayed across the album - raw, ambient, harsh, and authentically old school - proved to be a commanding throwback to those never-reached-again heights of the 1990s. "The music, and only the music, is of importance - everything else is futile," said BRÆ back then, quite rightly.
Alas, the membership behind the band is revealed as two incredibly prolific individuals of the deepest black metal underground: Swartadauþuz and Déhà, whose combined works could fill pages of this text. And yet, no further name-dropping is necessary when faced with BRÆ's second album, Av Vålnader Bortom Allt. Comprising two tracks that each top 21 minutes, the duo's second full-length is an incredibly epic and immersive experience. Here, the spaces between "searing" and "ambient" are vaster and almost alluringly meditative; the setup of Spartan acoustics build slowly into undulating waves of medieval black metal circa 1994. Some could qualify this record as "breathtakingly beautiful," if they knew not the rolling stormclouds of doom on the horizon...and deeper steps taken into BRÆ's catacomb'd sound beckon the listener further, still unmindful of that imminent doom (or perhaps resigned to blissfully-dead submission). As such, Av Vålnader Bortom Allt undeniably bears the hallmarks of both men's feverish creativity, but taken together, the full fathom of BRÆ as a band is displayed in its most complete and compelling form. Vintage obsidian, for only true believers!
Black vinyl LP with insert.
Amor Fati Productions 2023
