Fierce the night-black raven looked from its piercing eyes onto the frozen landscape, observing a lone wolf which howled its shredding sound, resonating over the snow-white plains. Its gaze caught certain figures with axes and spears moving rapidly from the north. Minutes later the beast passed a small, crowded village. Nothing of interest. Being softly blown forward by ice cold winds, the winged fury continued its journey over mountains, fields, the sea, flying its daily routine and being the eyes of its dark Master… Norwegian black (Viking) metal band Kampfar was founded in 1994 by its vocalist Dolk after abandoning his Burzum-ish black metal band Mock. The latter was already formed in 1992, thus being one of the earlier Norwegian black metal bands. Being not overly productive, the band released only three full length albums until this date. Other band members are guitarist Thomas (since 1994), ex-Dimension F3H drummer II13 (since 2003) and bass player Jon Bakker (probably since early 2003). After several years of writing, rehearsing, and playing live, Kampfar has unleashed this new album called Kvass. The main strengths of Kvass are Dolks scraping vocals and the raw Norwegian language in which he sings (with exception of the English song Ravenheart).

The language of the Norse is a perfect fit to this doomy type of Viking metal. The vocals are mixed into the front, audible above all other instruments. The clean backing vocals on the (catchy) first and fifth track sound a bit weak, but the horrid screeching screams on the first song are really evil. There isn’t much variation in the long songs, they are ongoing, mid-tempo and not too complicated riffs. These riffs are grim and depressing and this, together with the relatively slow pace, causes a doomy effect. Also, the repetition might get boring after a while, so this album is more recommended for ‘easy listening’. Near the end of the album the speed turns up a bit in certain parts, still nothing too furious though. This pace-changing makes the last song sound more interesting. Several times, the music is brought to life with small sample parts of icy winds and melting water, adding to the atmosphere. All in all, an enjoying album and most suitable for easy background listening. Raspende stemmer, hyl og magi!