Afargang, “Andvake”
Andvake is the debut record of Olav Mjelva’s latest project Afargang, which announced its signing to ByNorse back in March of this year. Olav has always been something of Norwegian folk music’s “wild child” - thoroughly steeped in the traditions of Røros and Hardanger, but always exploring the boundaries of Norwegian fiddling. Not only known for his band Sver and collaboration with Eric Rydvall, he has also become something of a global face for the hardanger fiddle through his soundtrack performances on some minor projects like God of War: Ragnarök, Loki, Rings of Power, and Cocaine Bear. And, of course, many followers of the Nordic Sound will be at least somewhat familiar with this fiddling on Ivar Bjørnson and Einar Selvik’s Skuggsjá record. It’s with this hefty CV in tow that led to a highly anticipated release of this fiddling icon’s latest heavy metal endeavor.
Mot Verda opens the album with two key components which will come to define the style of Andvake: a doomy, hardanger fiddle-led riff, and a melancholic soaring chorus. The full-bodied hardanger fiddle intro does a great job at introducing the album as a different kind of folk metal, and gets the listener right into the action. With Kvile, Mjelva sings a catchy verse a timbre which evokes a traditional Norwegian singing style, with a rhythm that suggests a traditional springar rhythm. With these two elements making up the skeleton of the track, Kvile exemplifies this different approach to folk metal that relies on the songwriter intuitively understanding how the traditional music works to the point where it can be so subtly woven with a predominantly heavy metal palette without coming off as ham-fisted pastiche. The title track, Andvake commits to this further, featuring elements from doom, black, and prog, and I particularly love the use of clean vocals here.
With Leika, we take a turn stylistically into what easily became my favorite track of the record. The rich blending of timbres both vocal and instrumental, along with the beautiful melody sung by Mjelva, led to a transcendental track rich with atmosphere and pathos. I know it’s funny that the one track on the record that isn’t a metal track is the highlight for me, but if you’ve had the pleasure of stumbling upon this track without warning, you probably understand where I’m coming from. It really is a wonderful piece of music.
Mellomspel: Vêrfolne serves as an intermezzo of sorts with the “live recording” fiddle track accompanied by electric guitar before Sjå det blånar brings us down the home stretch. With these next three tracks, including Leve og døy and I di einig, we’re taken once more through an eclectic tapestry of styles between doom and a very Enslaved-esque prog. The record concludes with Kom ned, returning somewhat to the calm atmosphere of Leika but with more teeth. The beautiful harmonies of this track serves as a nice reflective outro at the end of the Andvake journey, with an excellent added touch of blending atmospheric screams with Mjelva’s clean vocals.
As I said, there was quite a bit of hype leading up to Andvake considering Mjelva’s eclectic and experimental background as a fiddler, coupled with ByNorse of all labels backing the project. The end result is a truly unique doom-folk experience with plenty of black and prog metal influences peppered in – a blending of styles that is executed beautifully. The songwriting itself is superb, with arrangements of blended timbres and textures proving well-crafted throughout the album’s runtime. Mjelva also could not have teamed up with a better cast of studio musicians, and the actual production of the record opting for a classic and warm analog approach over a more modern digital sound also lent itself well to the overall vibe of the record.
If there’s one note I would have, it’s that I was actually expecting more fiddling. But, for a first attempt at such an ambitious project without much precedent (again, Enslaved and the Skuggsá project are the closest parallels I can think of), there is so much this record did right, and so many promising paths forward, that I look forward to seeing which elements of Andvake are taken forward in future endeavors. This is a project that I anxiously await to see the development of over the coming years, for this first foray into relatively uncharted territory is nothing short of an absolute success.
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