“The New Black” opens ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin’ with emphasis on Daniel’s soulless vocals by subduing the piece’s other elements. The various vocal styles, borrowed from Daniel’s musical history, are key to ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin’ and emerge from “The New Black” through a minimal irregular rhythm, short crescendos of synth, and looming low-end waterforms which all lurk in the track’s subzero blindness, establishing a strong current of dark ambient which flows through the sleeper of the CD.
What follows is “Madr”, a central legacy track which cleverly captures a strong black metal sensibility while remaining rooted in the project’s power electronics/industrial intentions, a melodic refrain and sung vocals buried under the hateful synthesizer, drum machine bursts and grim vocals which dominate the piece as they suffocate, strafe and castigate the track respectively. I haven’t before heard something so melodically capable retain such a strong genre focus and external harshness, and as only the second track on the CD “Madr” quickly sets the bar high, its glimmers of musical legacy giving brief breaths of hope in the ebbs of an otherwise dominating piece. If Deadwood was a merger of black metal’s more raw and unforgiving tendencies, “Madr” acknowledges the genre’s slow melodic abilities without drawing too much attention.
“Yawning Void” and “Vanagandr” likewise bridge the same gap, the former importing semi-melody in its abyssal low-end synth haunt, similar to “Madr” in affect but stripped of everything except synthesizer and vocals; the latter corrals its melodic elements from a transparent synth drift, adding a slowed heartbeat pulse and glacial chill without tipping the piece fully into dark ambient territory. Shards of desolate musicality lie at the core of V:XII’s work, permeating these few tracks in a less subtle way than elsewhere on the CD and tying V:XII to its history.
“Twining Rope” follows as a more straight ahead death industrial work, chilling synth despondency moving into snowstorm flange which is swirled around a mordant rhythm and tectonic effected vocals, a bleak outlook repeated on “Djavulsogon - Deconstructing the Bloodwolf” which strips V:XII down to a basic track of bleak synthesizer and gruff vocals, and the driving drum machine thud and wisps of electronics which underpin gruff vocals on “Ururz” for a strong hint of Trepaneringsritualen’s ritualised industrial rawness.
Penultimate track “BAHF” is the merging of the disc’s various ideas, a slow musical pulse running through the piece as it bursts forth with hardened power electronics vignettes, lulls into slow ambient drift, and a closing harder rhythmically edged apex – again tied together with hoarse vocals which push the piece through its permutations. “BAHF” manages to tie the threads of ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin: The Odium Disciplina’ together and inject some greater compositional movement, without ever sounding incongruous or too stretched.
While each track presents as a standalone creation, ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin: The Odium Disciplina’ has a dark chill through its entirety: an unshakeable iciness which – while familiar to fans of the genres V:XII draws from – cuts across the CD’s genre references and permeates to the unbeating heart of the CD. The clear and nuanced production serves to detail that encompassing frost’s impact on all the timbral components of ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin: The Odium Disciplina’, burying the listener in its dark Arctic scenery down to the last snowflake. In execution and effect V:XII delivers within genre expectations, while adding a clear imprint of its own.
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