True Norwegian Black Metal is a feeling. Strip away all the over-the-top, flamboyant imagery and pomp and circumstance that has permeated some of the bigger names of the sub-genre over the last three decades and what are you left with? Well, whatever it is, it’s not True Norwegian Black Metal. If you go back and listen to the albums that birthed TNBM, it becomes immediately clear that creating this music was a way of life. It was inherent. It evoked the jaw-dropping beauty of the land whence it originated. It was bigger than those that composed it. In a sense, it was universal. Intangible. There are truths to the words that Euronymous spoke about the gatekeeping of this music in those early days. As divisive as his message may be today to some, his intention was to keep it pure. To keep it unfettered and untainted by the selfdom and all the self-centeredness and superiority that comes along with an overestimated ego. Black metal, in its purest form, should never glorify the aspect of ego. As such, the original intent of this music was never meant to be dependent on anything extrinsic to it. It did not exist for the sake of anything else. It was, and always should be, its own end.

If we were to examine contemporary Norwegian black metal by the tennets listed above, there are only a handful of bands that abide by this ethos. Of these bands, one prides itself as the standard-bearer. Djevel. Dissecting an album by this Oslo-based band feels a bit reductive in practice, as there exists many complex layers to their music. To be clear, by ‘complex’ I am not referring to the composition itself, which, in its own right, is quite straight-forward. This isn’t music that is complex for the sake of being technically complex. It is complex in an empyreal, soul-searching way. On their latest album, Natt Til End, their ninth, the triumvirate of Trånn Ciekals (guitars), Faust (drums), and Kvitrim (vocals) have proven, once again, that the spirit of True Norwegian Black Metal is not just reserved as something for the history books. It is tangible (in the sense that it actually exists in 2024), yet still intangible.

The album begins with the track ‘Bespottelsen’ (when translated to English means: mockery and derision). One could take that meaning in a number of ways, but having spoken with the band’s main composer, Trånn Ciekals, I have to wonder if this title reflects his views on the current state of Norwegian black metal to some degree. Whatever the case may be, the song quickly states its intention within the first several seconds; a lone guitar swirls and vexes its way through an early Emperor-inspired riff while the steady beat of a kick-drum marshals in a moribund of judiciously produced/mixed structured cacophony. ‘En vinter efter kommer’ is a weighty, suffocating, mid-paced affair infused with some truly grand atmospherics, both musically and vocally. The descriptor ‘grand’ in this case should be clarified as something akin to early-to-mid second wave Norwegian black metal (i.e. early Satyricon and Taake), and not ‘grand’ in an orchestral, pompous sense.

‘Ravenhymne’ and ‘Jesu lidelse’ glisten forth like the soundtrack to a peaceful winter evening on the banks of a dark lake atop a snow covered Norwegian mountain. The use of keyboards as an accent to the majestic harmonic soundscapes is perfectly executed, in much the same way keys were utilized sparingly on Satyricon‘s classic The Shadowthrone. ‘Under nattens fane i Fandens prakt’ contains perhaps the most infectious riff found on the album. Said riff is amplified ten-fold by the frigid production and icy tremolo riffing while the rhythm section reverberates from the depths of a glacial cavern.’I skovaandsfavn’ acts as an alluring piano-only interlude to the album’s final track, ‘Natt til ende’. The perfect ending to perhaps one of the year’s best black metal albums is a chilling journey into Burzum-esque territory, more specifically as it relates to vocalist Kvitrim’s Varg-like wails of agony and the incredibly hypnotic, trance-inducing repetition.

As the end to a trilogy, Natt Til Ende is the manifest of the final ending of Christianity and the death of ‘Jesus’ (in both physical and mental form). It speaks of the idea and concept of forces that Christianity labels ‘evil’… the same forces the band call natural and human throughout the album’s narrative. It explores the repulsive idea that ‘god’ lives on through man, and puts forth the perspective on how these ideals should come to an end. In the case of Djevel, the end of all false hope and ‘light’ is achieved through seven tracks of unadulterated black metal.

One cannot understate the contributions of this band. In a world that continuously clamors for the next best thing, Djevel are a refreshingly honest, no-frills band that revel in a time and place that is slowly, but surely, fading away into obscurity. Of course, we always have that antiquated catalog of incredibly poignant releases to fallback on, but the world of black metal needs Djevel more than they know it.