Notoriously cryptic and elusive Swedish experimental metallers VILDHJARTA (meaning "Wildheart") release their second album, a full ten years after their debut - worth the wait? Let's find out! The initial listen will yield the first observation about this music: 'Djent'. Certainly, the band warrant comparisons to their fellow countrymen and seismic musical force MESHUGGAH (who, let's be honest, invented Djent ten years before anybody else was doing it!) For my money, however, the term is no longer useful. Too many of its characteristics have been incorporated into other genres (including the notoriously vague and vacuous space that includes things like Post-Metal, and Avant-Garde Metal) for Djent to stand on its own as a distinct genre. Indeed, whether it stood on its own as a distinct genre in the first place is a debate for another time.

But I digress. The second thing that listeners will note here is that one cannot listen to, or refer to, individual songs on this album. That's clearly not how these guys intended this to be listened to. There are stops-and-starts within tracks, sections that continue thematically across multiple tracks and many other aspects that show just how interconnected this all is. Like a veritable metal symphony, this demands to be listened to front to back in a single sitting (which, at one hour and twenty minutes, is by no means a modest feat!) Herein likes another point of comparison to MESHUGGAH: their Catch 33 album is a similar kind of 'metal symphony'.

Twists and turns there are aplenty, with every imaginable nook and cranny stuffed to the brim with atmosphere. In that respect they have clearly been listening to other bands such as UNEVEN STRUCTURE or TESSERACT, who really specialise in that heavily layered atmosphere. Oftentimes it is precisely this atmosphere that links tracks together, forming a dreamy, ethereal glue that binds together moments of dissonant and distressed Djent staccato-riffage - absolutely delicious!

It's not all dreamscapes though, as there are genuine moments of ferocity and angst. Album opener "Lavender Haze" rebounds between savage downtuned heaviness on one hand and atmospheric contemplation on the other, and even combines the two all at once! In its final moments, through to the opening moments of "När De Du Älskar Kommer Tillbaka Från De Döda" we transition to minor tone before Vilhem's cataclysmic vocals are unleashed on the ears of the listener. 'Crushing' really is the only way to describe the effect of these vocals and guitars together. "Kaos2" is a microcosm of everything this album has to offer. There's plenty of dreamy passages edged with more brutal sections, which continues into "Toxin", wherein we hear our first blastbeat. The end of this track, in a way, signified the end of the 'first movement', as there is no transition between "Toxin" and the next track: onwards to the next movement!

"Brännmärkt" is a great example of that syncopated drumming (one of MESHUGGAH'S specialties) that makes this kind of metal so satisfying to listen to. One cannot help but bob their legs to the beat that is never actually played but so strongly implied, and which can be 'read between the lines' as it were. "Den Helige Anden (Under Vatten)" is one of the heavier moments on the album, opening with crushing ferocity but losing none of the layers of atmosphere built up to this point. It also draws attention to Buster's drumming expertise, keeping things pounding along steadily despite whacky timings and alternating rhythms.

"Passage Noir" feels like a 'part two' to the previous track. As I said earlier, it's not useful or accurate to think of these tracks as entirely separate or distinct. The whole thing really does make up a single piece in a sense. There's a sense of the heaviness building up to something, anticipation of something going to happen. "Måsstadens Nationalsång (Under Vatten)" opens with dissonant notes on clean guitar, mirroring in theme and tone transitions we have seen throughout the album. This continues into "Heartsmear", which ends with a feeling of conclusion. The first half of this metal symphony thus ends.

I won't proceed track-by-track in this fashion as I would urge the listener to embark on this journey also and experience the complex display for themselves, but I wanted to give the reader a sense of scale of what is here and how carefully this has been constructed. Great care has indeed been taken to put together a sense of continuity in theme and mood across all seventeen tracks. However, I must mention final track "Paaradiso", which rings with a sense of finality and closure. It's always gratifying when the final track really feels like the final track. To return, yet again, to that symphonic comparison (I will continue to labour that comparison, so help me!) it possesses the crescendo and recapitulation quality that good, thunderous symphonic finales are known for.

I'll be honest, this is not easy listening. The music is complex and more towards the deep end of the metal spectrum, possessing elements of Prog and Experimental influences in addition to the ever-present Djent (again, debate over its existence/usefulness as a sub-genre notwithstanding!) That this demands to be listened to from cover to cover will, I fear, not endear it to some, but that's okay. For the nerds and music theory geeks out there, this will be of intense interest, and my experience has always been that such people do not care whether other people think it's cool or not (which, it is!) If this band have any failing it is that they are so deliberately obscure and humble. More people should hear this as proof that there are musicians/nerds out there writing serious, intelligent music for other nerds - we need to show solidarity with one another after all!