Forecasts of a temperature drop radiate from Svart Vinter‘s new album Mist, communicated not only by the band’s name and the record’s title but also from the gray fog blanketing black forests on the album’s cover. Most of the world may be baking in record heat waves right now, but winter is as much a state of mind as a season.

It is, in fact, many states of mind. The season brings gale-force turbulence as well as oppressive chills, death and decay as well as huddled loneliness, and the kindling of fires in an effort to keep the dark and the cold at bay. In some areas it’s also a time of beauty and wonder. In all these ways the season itself reflects and spawns a range of moods. After the roasting many of us are now enduring, it may be more welcome than in many past years at first, before dread and difficulties settle in during the long months until spring.

Mist manages to capture many of the sensations of the dark season, sketching portraits of what happens to the Earth as it turns away from the distant blazing orb, but even more so portraying the human emotions that find their simulacrum in the outer world. Continue reading »