It turns out you can improve quite a bit at something if you chip away at it for three decades straight. Such is the realization that comes from Nordlys’ debut record, Lichterglanz Finsternis, which released earlier this month. It’s not immediately apparent from the straight-laced and vaguely atmospheric black metal. Hold it up beside the Norwegian band’s previous release, ‘Til Pest, and time will make its tautological case. ‘Til Pest compiles the band’s demos from the ‘90s up until they changed their name to, who would’ve guessed, Pest. In this light, Lichterglanz Finsternis becomes a work of refinement. The scrappy guitar work on ‘Til Pest becomes melodic, the shrill vocals mature into gravel, the impulsive transitions and adolescent attention-span songwriting learns to calm down and trust itself. All this would be missed when taking Lichterglanz Finsternis at face value because it ignores three decades’ worth of context.
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Intricate knowledge of Nordlys’ lore isn’t required to enjoy Lichterglanz Finsternis. You could exit right now and be satisfied with the stone-faced and gimmick-free black metal. But it’s a marvel it even saw the light of day, considering that lead vocalist and guitarist Aleksi Schorn has been preoccupied with a larger project for the last 20 years, totalselfhatred. Additionally, Nordlys has adopted multiple names since they formed in 1994, and each represented a change of direction. As can be implied, returning to the Nordlys mantle implies how Schorn compares the band to his other projects.
Reflexively, Nordlys breaks from the absolution of totalselfhatred. The latter immolates and overwhelms with slow and dense compositions, embodying the depressive suicidal black metal descriptor. As Schorn puts it, his time away from Nordlys and working with totalselfhatred “made me return to the very roots of Nordlys’ music, since totalselfhatred includes a lot of variety and out-of-the-box elements. So with Nordlys, we focus on what we know best and rather enhance it than try to create something new.”
That’s why Nordlys is a fundamentals-first, foremost, and only act. Moderation and technique are the cardiovascular and muscular systems. Nordlys isolate the evergreen black metal ideal, musically speaking, which is all to say that they replace the scorched-earth production and minimalist playing that were proxies for ideological rejection and marked many Norwegian staple albums with fluid songwriting and agreeable production. Even the synth work follows this pedestrian example, as you’d have to dig through “Wilde Natur” to find them.
Much of Lichterglanz Finsternis rolls off Nordlys’ tongue then, the ease at which they play and the power that fuels them coming from what’s by now a deep familiarity with their material. Schorn says, “We started actively rehearsing for the album in January 2019. However, there’s a lot of music on that album that was created in the nineties that just never got finished or recorded properly.” Surely, six years of practice for songs you wrote 30 years ago will beget expertise, doubly so if you’re still playing with the same people.
While Schorn spent his time with totalselfhatred, drummer Torstein (credited as Hraesvelgr on earlier Nordlys releases) stayed quiet. It’s not clear what he did in between Nordlys/Pest/Die Pest/Schwarze Wut releases, though he and Schorn kept in contact. Those first few Nordlys demos only feature Schorn and Torstein. Lichterglanz Finsternis maintains that union, adding only Kriya on bass.
The way Schorn speaks about working with Torstein implies that there was some separation between them and that Lichterglanz Finsternis, in a sense, reacquaints them with what originally linked them–orthodox Norwegian black metal. Of course, physical proximity from one another plays a role (“Living some 2000km north from Memmingen, since almost 25 years, made the contact less intense than it has been back in the days,” says Schorn), but it fails to explain why the pair never released a full album as Nordlys or Pest even though they had a record contract with Solistitium Records at one point.
Despite releasing a handful of demos and compilations, Nordlys couldn’t finish an LP before each members’ strong-willed personality derailed the band. Schorn states that he and Torstein are passionate and possess a specific vision for Nordlys, and that is just as likely to spur them into action as it is detrimental to the band’s progress. The differing ideals led the two to split Nordlys and relinquish the Solistitium deal in the late ’90s or early ’00s (the exact date is unclear). This schism and eventual reconnection, which arose after they accepted an invitation to play a revival show in 2017 alongside Mightiest, Lunar Aurora and Nagelfar, their first time performing together in years, explains the relieved and celebratory nature of Schorn’s responses. “It felt great to kinda celebrate the old times and create something similiar after such a long time,” Schorn says.
Lichterglanz Finsternis has, in a way, been around for 30 years as an uncovered black metal totem, outlasting waves of mainstream interest and ignorance towards the genre alongside the requisite developments and trends that have persisted and faded. It’s something like an avatar for the genre as a whole. The sonic identity is there, it’s just the pomp is stripped away because, after you’ve changed your name more than a few times, gone through years of silence and “self-hatred,” and seen the face paint become cod pieces, all that’s left is the music. Schorn says that was the totality of their ambition, “I personally feel it includes the original Nordlys sound but executed with an updated sound. That was actually the goal. However, I don’t mind adding some rough edges on the next album.”
By reviving Nordlys, Schorn and Torstein convert what’s inherently young and reactive into something mature and reflective. How does one uphold a truth to a genre that was formed on embellishment and pageantry, one that built a moat between the self and the image, and that obscured its creators in the name of “darkness?” These are youthful concerns and holding onto them as we age is akin to keeping a pumpkin on your doorstep as December approaches. Nordlys answer these questions with Occam’s razor: stick to the music. The core that other black metal subgenres can’t replicate. Lichterglanz Finsternis must be seen as a 30-year debut project; to ignore that would be to ignore how it earned its limping leg and arthritis and hoarse voice, its defining features, elevating it above Nordlys’ earliest work.
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Lichterglanz Finsternis is available now via Solistitium Records.
