VANANIDR - Beneath The Mold Digi-CD

“Beneath the Mold” wants to combine the tragic and the furious side of black metal. This is not an overambitious approach, but things work better whenever Vananidr concentrate on one facet. For instance, the vehement “Dressed in Pain” is executed excellently. Here we get merciless high speed, intense guitars and echoing vocals in a compact and robust form. The closer sounds very similar and features the same elements. These songs give the album some necessary impulses, while the opener “Dominion” does not really hit the mark, also its beginning builds a lot of tension. Not only because of the solid production, one can lend an ear to this work, even though it does not revolutionize the genre or pushes tried and tested methods into dizzying heights. I am not totally fine with the level of coherence here, but at the end, the positive aspects of “Beneath the Mold” prevail.