By the great humming breath of the beast what grunts its dark heat and huffing unease into the atmosphere Sunnfjord, Norway-borne avant-garde metal quintet TRELLDOM reawaken beneath smoke-flared nostrils and jagged tongues, wagging their possession into this heartily experimental fifth full-length album. A second delve into the unlimited potential of present-day dirge ‘…by the Word…‘ fittingly emboldens the voice of the maestro but also the psychedelia and jazz-fused rhythmus of the reborn act unto darker dimensional feats outside of time. The result curiously straddles challenging, fiery non-traditional muse and the luxury of maturing musicianship to a point of polished transcendental reverberation.

Trelldom formed circa 1992 by way of vocalist and visionary Gaahl who is best known for his own Gaahl’s Wyrd as well as a decade long tenure fronting Gorgoroth. Rather than restate the extended history of the band I’d refer folks to my review of their return via ‘…By the Shadows…‘ (2024) where I’d been thorough enough in documenting their 90’s birth and stretch into the late 2000’s before a nearly two decade hiatus. The new skin revealed via album number four was a total paradigm shift toward the avant-garde verge, a work degrees-removed from the black metal that’d come before. Parsing careful distance between what is listenable, repeatable and that which is wholly experimental (or at least avant-garde) in design the modus (and crew) for that fourth album is interchangeably described alongside the fifth yet they are entirely unique articles.

The most notable feature of this newly renovated Trelldom mind palace is first and foremost the expansion of Gaahl‘s vocal theatrics and performance beyond harsh black metal related voicing to suit the “blackened psychedelic jazz metal” resultant, a different current which’d surpass even the expectations of Gaahl’s Wyrd fandom. The previous album used semi-lucid hymnal declaration as its basal (unreliable) narrator within largely backgrounded bizarro appearances from the vocalist but on this new album his work is now more active, conjuring haunted and sometimes animalistic presence in deeper layers. Likewise the use of odd-metered, exaggerative rhythms oftentimes with dissonant progressions and dramatic swelling movement is accentuated here within ritualized pieces sure to compel folks seeking distance from the usual second-wave hashed battalion.

Said battalion is unnerved by way of avant-noir fashioned traits amplified via a second collaboration with prog-rock percussionist Kenneth Kapstad (Spidergawd, ex-Motorpsycho) who returns alongside jazz saxophonist Kjetil Møster as anchoring actors in the dark drama that unfolds within. Recorded in many studios and many parts ‘…By the Word…‘ reflects a well-planned transience of spirit, movement between intimate ritualistic acts and elaborate jazz-bound catastrophic tension (see: “Folding the Mind“) in the process of illustrating dark and unsettling echoic vision. Unconventional rhythms, bizarre chord progressions (esp. “I Speak Forgotten Voices“, “In There Outside”) and greater noir sprawl characterize the experience as dramatically anxious and chamberlike in its psychedelia tinged coughing distance from the listener.

The psychedelic flood of Trelldom‘s craft now reaches for a headspace just shy of the complete recontextualization of black metal rhythmus and atmosphere you’d find on the more ‘recent’ evolution of Oranssi Pazuzu as their work achieves compelling space of its own. The title track “By The Word” stinks especially high of their potpourri of rotted oaken percussion, scrambling guitar runs, and rattling churn braced by very different takes on blackened extreme metal motioning. The unanchored listener could otherwise seek precedence for these deconstructed and eerily feathered-together ideas in Aenaon or even Virus past but ‘…By the Word…‘ is far more chaotic, experimental in its tumbling forth action.

The most effective songs here for my own taste push even further into psychoactive tension via rhythmic exaggeration and repetitious bent as they create persistent unease. Opener “When This Was Young” is probably the strongest point of immerse outright but “This Moment the Life of a Memory” offers otherwise approachable induction in this sense as longtime guitarist Stian Kårstad uses muted distorted tones to crawl and sway through the piece’s narrative, horns aglare and sermons whispered beyond. I’d otherwise found “The Word Chose to Vanish” the most complete showing of all the foreboding tension and bells-and-whistles Trelldom have fused into this latest records greater font. While these specific pieces are mind-pinging stretches within the expanse the total effect of ‘…By the Word…‘ isn’t a total hallucination so much as a dark, cryptic trip through fairly neat and tightly controlled presentation.

I’m not sure if threats of coherence, readability and taut control are the right preface for the experience offered by ‘…By the Word…‘ on my part but I’d attempt to separate Trelldom‘s wares from the unkempt kleptoid race of progressive/avant-garde black metal one might expect at a glance. Rather than weirding for the sake of it this record strikes me as a series of invocations, not necessarily possessed arcane conjure so much as a cumulatively bleak examination of the proverbial artist’s voice amidst the dissolving stature of the word, written and spoken, away from cultural profundity. However you’d parse their esoteric and unique undertaking yourself I’d suggest this latest record from the band is emboldened rather than plainly iterative, a heady yet sincerely wrangled experimental release sure to entertain most any black metal addled mind. A high recommendation.

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