Hailing from the southern part of Sweden Grift is a fairly high concept atmospheric black metal project of Perditor aka Erik Gärdefors who also moonlights in black metal projects Arfsynd and Orcivus. His work in Grift is highly influenced by Drudkh and Ulver to some degree. He’d released dark folk before with the ‘Samhain Celebration’ EP in 2016 and his second full-length ‘Arvet’ featured heavy use of dark folk integration so ‘Vilsna Andars Boning’ should be no shock or surprise. I personally haven’t been entirely on board with Grift‘s releases outside of ‘Syner’ as it reminded me of October Falls a fair amount with some degree of atmospheric black metal informing the folkish black metal elements. This professional and intimate folk EP is impressive beyond his past work for my taste and builds upon the folk-informed flourishes of ‘Arvet’ beautifully.

The value of ‘Vilsna Andars Boning’ is largely in Gärdefors’ steadily improving vocal skills and arrangements. Compared to ‘Samhain Celebration’ two years previous his projection and clarity are greatly advanced along with a much cleaner recording. Each Grift release has a concept and an intention and this one is an additional meditation atop the Kinnekulle mountain in Sweden. The poetry of his lyrics, written entirely in Swedish, is both existential in it’s questioning and beautiful in it’s description. I suppose if the goal is escapism some of the meaning is lost in translation, but the message and the concept is always beautifully done considering the low bar for most rote atmospheric/folk black metal related projects.

Each track is roughly five minutes and of the two I think “Bartom berget” is the most striking, though some of the instrumentation of “Dårarnas massiv” reminded me of Windir for a moment, for what it’s worth. Ten minutes of neofolk/dark folk/nordic folk is an easy sell for me and Gärdefors’ skilled performance echoes through all of his work whether it is black metal or not. In fact I could have listened to an hour of this if he ever grows more ambitious with his instrumentation and decides to go fully towards something like Fejd, he definitely has the voice for it. Anyhow, an excellent diversion and I’m all for more of it.

Beyond the mountain. 3.0/5.0

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