Dødsferd – Cursing Your Will to Live

Earlier this year I reviewed Dødsferd’s album ‘Fucking Your Creation’: a Greek one-man band by Wrath, who revived the old times of the true Norwegian black metal combined with a touch of the USBM scene (Judas Iscariot/ Weltmacht). Impressed with this CD I did an interview with Wrath, and within a few weeks I received the new Dødsferd, called ‘Cursing Your Will To Live’. To get to the point right away: ‘Fuckin Your Creation’ was very good, and this ‘Cursing Your Will To Live’ is absolutely great.

Sure, the true nineties feeling has remained, which is a good thing: the great thing is that the songs are worked out great and that the development of the songs is beyond any doubt. It is hard to understand that Dødsferd is just Wrath, and no one else. Dødsferd manages to stay both nihilist and primitive on the one hand, but on the other hand to take his compositions to a next and higher level. Sometimes I get a feeling of the old Satyricon, around ‘Nemesis Divina’, just without the epic parts. The songs are aggressive, still with the hypnotic hook lines, but the average length of the songs has been shortened, resulting in eight compact songs. Furthermore there is an intro, and, like on the previous album, a spoken word track: this time it is edited somewhere in the middle of the album, although I had preferred it towards the end of the album. But hey, that is a matter of personal taste.

Okay, Dødsferd doesn’t reinvent the wheel regarding originality, but I don’t care: the music is brought with great versatility, strong compositions and with the right attitude. For those who like the nineties of Norwegian black metal and Judas Iscariot/ Weltmacht, and give shit about trends, this ‘Cursing Your Will To Live’ is an album from 2007 you must at least listen to! Dødsferd is highly productive, yet what staggers me is that Wrath manages to produce two great albums in one year, with this ‘Cursing Your Will To Live’ as one of my personal highlights!