This heavy high-velocity album will leave you dazed and confused. But it is a happy daze paired with confusion on a higher level.

Here at Veil of Sound we are a bit late to the party for this album, even though we are still mighty proud that we were able to premiere their first-ever single in an interview with the guys already back in August 2021. Their new eponymous record has deservedly been reviewed in every corner of the web that reviews underground heavy music. So, is there anything new to say about this tangled thicket of uncompromising heavy music that seems to be on the verge of intended implosion throughout its 40 minutes? Let’s give it a try.

It is now commonly known that these three musicians have melted Breach and Ølten into this barrage of onslaught of sludgy post-music. It is probably the heaviest album released this year and might be the heaviest since their first album, Star Is Way Way is Eye. The drums drive the dynamics while the guitars ebb and flow, make a detour, or swerve into a roundabout, volleying a cacophony of sonics and impressions. The dense music surrounds and almost drowns out the emotional and feral screaming vocals.

The trio of Tomas Liljedahl on vocals and guitar, Christophe Macquat on guitar, and Moog and Marc Theurillat on drums can confirm what others have shown before: you do not need the bass guitar to make heavy and dense music. In the case of this album, a full-fledged bass might have softened the edges of Norna’s sound too much. The music seems to get a sharper edge when the bass is played on the E-string of the guitars.

They open the attack on your senses with ”Samsara”, where the wide, heavy riffs and steady drumming with cymbals spreading sparks surround the untamed screaming vocals. Suddenly the heaviness of sound effects from the guitars induces a breather: Heavy drumming emerges, giving a billowing rhythm to the dissonant flow of guitars. The music fuses back to the heavy rhythmic flow embracing the vocalist’s desperate screams. ”For Fear of Coming” holds a powerful, slow rhythmic surge of music, denser than the previous. A slightly higher guitar appears for some time until it sinks back into the mythical flow. On this, as on the other songs, the drums are also working hard, providing a sense that it is mediating between the two guitars to lift the vocals. A shift in tempo opens up the sounds until it swells back with the guitars fighting for attention, one deep and one with a bit more translucent riff.

The song ”Ghost” has a great opening with riffs on the lowest bass string of the guitar finding a melodic theme while the drums make the music even heavier. One guitar swirls out on a higher-pitched roundabout before both of them fuse to encapsulate the vocals. This is also a juggernaut of a song dragging sluggishly forward until the middle breather with disturbing discordant escapades and sound effects. It all melts together again into something even heavier than before which is quite amazing. Here the band shows how dense and sludgy music like this can be performed, while still being somehow melodic and expulsing a lot of energy.

The band slows the pace down to something like Funeral Doom with lurking guitars on “Shine By Its Own Light”. There are subtle shifts, ebb and flow before a shift in tempo when the guitars surge above the relentless rhythm by the drums and the feral vocal emerges in the dense flow. There is some nice sense of fuzz in the song. The penultimate song, ”Shadow works”, opens with two guitars setting off in different directions with one giving the sense of dissonance along with mediating drums. There is much drive audible here and repetitive themes are moving upwards and onwards and seem to implode in a syrupy soup of dark matter. The album closes with ”The Sleep”, where there is a delightful part of fuzzy strumming in the layers in the sludgey sound. There are desperate whispers and some indistinctive voices in the layers. The music fuses with the vocals leading forward. A lighter strumming part of the song turns into heavy staccato riffage, stomping forward until the album ends with fading sound effects.

Trying to pin a genre to Norna´s music is difficult. As writers, we are always asked for it, as are music distributors. So, we try to give a hint of what it sounds like even if it does not quite grasp the immense impact Norna´s music has. The musicians are often a bit bemused and bewildered when asked about what genre they play. Tomas Liljedahl, though, has a great answer: ”It´s only Rock ´n´ Roll on a very heavy level”. He is right of course, but the drumming is far more complex than on a normal rock song, and I do not think you will find such intriguing, layered complexity of guitar playing in a rock ’n roll song (now, in the back of my head I see Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly raising their eyebrows and coughing a bit). The genius of making complex things might look easy when they compare it with the Rock´n´Rollers, but this immense crumbling heaviness is something it seems only Norna can do. It is intoxicating and mezmerizing.