Vordven - Vordven (2003)

Vordven was a short lived (’96-’01) black metal band from Finland who during their career released two demos in 1997, their debut in 1999 and one final EP in 2001 before vanishing. Two years later No Colours Records compiled the first demo, the debut album and the final EP on one single disc to seal Vordven’s history.

I remember I first heard the band in late 2000 and was at the time something of a novice towards black metal and at least for me Vordven managed to capture my interest like few before them. The band’s sound was within a melodic mid-paced highly symphonic and folky style of black metal, which by description sounds fairly common, but to me Vordven has always remained a very unique entity. Joni and Matti’s keyboard work was grandiose, atmospheric, gloomy, folky and generally just beautiful sounding. This was also paired up with some interesting raw trebly guitar work and occasionally female vocals which just enhanced the ambiance further. Mika Packalen mostly used a raspy troll like voice that could possibly be compared to Ihsahn’s vocals on, ‘In the Nightside Eclipse,’ though he still sounds very unique to my ears. There were also some cleanly sung vocals and some spoken parts which aided to the more epic side of Vordven’s music.

In any case this self-titled compilation gathers together the debut demo, ‘When the Wind Blew for the First time,’ the debut album, ‘Towards the Frozen Stream,’ and their final EP, ‘Woodland Passage,’ though it admits whole songs from the EP due to time constraints. While the demo is very under produced (due to a re-mastering error) and slightly amateurish in its execution, it still remains and interesting listen and certainly is far better than most black metal demos. It also shows where Vordven would be taking their sound with the debut album. Even as Towards the Frozen Stream retains a lot of the rawness of the demo it further expands and shows a band with a lot of ideas. Lastly Woodland Passage proved to be an absolutely breathtaking final release for this band. Here the production was considerably improved and the song writing had reached its absolute peak. In fact one of the songs, ‘Cold Pagan Steel’ is absolutely one of my all time favorite black metal songs and frankly I think it’s criminal that so few have heard such a masterpiece.

It seemed after the EP Vordven had completely disappeared without any notice or anyone caring. I however patiently waited for another album but of course this never happened. It wasn’t confirmed with me (or anyone since their website was never updated) until more recently when I found one of the members on last.fm and he told me that Vordven didn’t so much as break up as they just faded away because of members moving large distances from each other.

Vordven may be gone but I can honestly say that I’ll keep this great band in my mind and stereo for a long time to come.