Wongraven - Fjelltronen (1995)

Long ago when Satyricon’s mastermind Sigurd ‘Satyr’ Wongraven was still a creative youth with brilliants ideas just oozing out of his mind he had this short lived side-project called Wongraven. On, ‘Fjelltronen’ alongside session musicians Ihsahn and Hans Sørensen, young Satyr created keyboard based medieval folky music filled with Nordic pride, an icy cold atmosphere and no doubt with the intentions of one upping a certain other medieval keyboard music maker named, Mortiis.

While both Wongraven and early Mortiis do have some common similarities its actually Wongraven that comes out ahead in sounding a bit more elaborate since acoustic guitars, bass, grand piano and various percussions are used whereas Mortiis was purely synthesized music. Plus Wongraven also has a bit of a folk influenced sound on three of the songs. But never mind any comparisons.

At sixteen minutes the first song, ‘Det Var En Gang Et Menneske’ is probably the best on this album as it takes the listener through a variety of dark moods with gorgeous melodies and features whispered and operatic vocals sung in Norwegian. ‘Over ødemark’ features Ihsahn on the grand piano whilst again Satyr uses his operatic singing, but doesn’t sing any actual words here. ‘Opp Under Fjellet Toner En Sang’ is a short folky minute and thirty second synthesized piece with lightly plucked acoustic guitars, while, ‘Tiden Er En Stenlagt Grav’ is similar in style but sounds considerable more memorable and it lasts for over eight minutes. Finally, ‘Fra Fjelltronen’ is a basic medieval ambient piece that sounds very close to what Mortiis was doing on his early albums.

So when all's said and done, ‘Fjelltronen’ is a decent recording, but unfortunately the whole thing only runs for thirty two minutes leaving both me and I’m sure every other listener craving more. Funnily enough Wongraven did make a brief comeback with a song on the Moonfog compilation, ‘A Different Perspective,’ but here Wongraven sadly made poor electronic techno music. But at least we still have this old album and we can always cherish the once untainted ingenious musical masterpieces from, Mr. Wongraven.