Sort Vokter, was a band that occupies a special place in the Norwegian black metal scene. Their only release "Folkloric Necro Metal" from 1996 is a special album, a very harsh but also atmospheric one, which exudes a mystical aura. Even the cover artwork, which depicts a forest in twilight, is a good first indication of this. In later re-releases, this was unfortunately replaced by a far less impressive image of an ordinary nocturnal forest landscape. It is important to mention here that Sort Vokter featured a certain Vidar Vaer, better known for his music in his one-man band Ildjarn, one of the most polarising black metal bands of all time, who were rejected or ridiculed by many for their extremely raw, low-fi nosy style, in which an extremely simple guitar accompanied a distorted screeching voice to partially programmed drums. For a few, however, Ildjarn were an important influence, which can be seen not least in the tribute album "Gathered under the banner of strength and anger: A homage to Ildjarn", released in 2004, on which such well-known and illustrious bands as Urfaust, Xasthur, Nachtmystium, Forgotten Tomb, Leviathan and several others express their admiration for Ildjarn in the form of cover versions.
The person of Vidar Vaer is probably one of the most mysterious in (Norwegian) black metal, as he has not spoken for decades and did not appear musically any more since the end of Ildjarn. Rumour has it that Vaer, who was vegan back then and also liked bands like Godflesh very much, now works as a teacher. According to the "inventor" of dungeon synth Mortiis (read the in-depth interview here: part I and part II) he was someone who enjoyed hiking in nature or mountain biking. Alongside Samoth and Ihsahn, Vidar Vaer was also a member of Thou Shalt Suffer, the quasi-predecessor band of Emperor. Here I can only warmly recommend the compilation "Into the woods of belial", which brings together the early works such as demo, rehearsal and EP, that well represents the dark death metal of this band, which was already history again in 1991. Thou Shalt Suffer was reactivated in 2000, but the album "Somnium" offers neoclassical material that has nothing to do with metal and is relatively dispensable, just like Ihsahn's avant-garde metal project Peccatum, which released three albums and two EPs between 1998 and 2005, which in my opinion were not really needed.
A certain Nidhogg was also involved in Sort Vokter, who also collaborated with Ildjarn, which resulted in the releases under the subsequent name Ildjarn-Nidhogg, which also created both raw, minimalist black metal in the style described above, as well as hauntingly majestic keyboard and ambient pieces, which could also be described as dungeon synth or winter synth, Hardangervidda Part I and Part II (named after the region in Norway, which is the largest mountain plateau in Europe), are absolute masterpieces in this respect. Nidhogg also released a self-titled EP under his own name, a demo recorded in 1994, which officially saw the light of day years later in 2015 via Aphelion Productions.
Another member of Sort Vokter was Heiinghund, who released three great albums between 2017 and 2020, skilfully mixing raw, not-so-primitive black metal compared to Ildjarn, with symphonic keys. According to Metal Archives, however, the protgaonist behind Heiinghund had a mix-up with his pseudonym, meaning that after all these decades, he misremembered the pseudonym he used in Sort Vokter, he was not Heiinghund but probablyTvigygre, here mentioned just as a fun fact.
But that's enough about the music-historical significance of Sort Vokter and its band members. By the way, it's worth mentioning that there were no demo recordings or a previous EP, the band started directly with this album, only to disappear into oblivion again afterwards.
Sort Vokter combine the harsh aura of minimalist black metal, reduced to the bare essentials, with majestic, dreamy keyboards, which is sometimes a very unique and unusual style, which at least I haven't heard in this form since "Folkloric Necro Metal". The album was recorded with a drum computer, which gives the whole thing a slightly sterile-representative character, but this should not be seen as a negative. Simple guitars and bass tracks are laid over this, with harsh vocals complementing the whole thing. It's also interesting to note that there was no fixed band line-up in that almost all the band members changed instruments from song to song, whoever played guitar on one track played bass on the next song and so on. All in all, Sort Vokter are not quite as raw as Ildjarn, but nevertheless, like Ildjarn, they tend to end their songs abruptly, so that, at least the first time you listen to them, you often think that the CD has an error, is skipping or that the stereo system is defect.
This album also contains pure, raw, puristic black metal tracks, as well as pure synthesizer tracks and intermezzi. However, Sort Vokter are at their strongest, most innovative and individual and, in a positive way, most obscure when this rough, basic-primitive metal is mixed with the synthsizer sounds, as in the opening track "Kveldstimer", which begins with sinister, dark synth sounds before harsh metal sounds suddenly and abruptly set in and especially in the third track of the album named "Gralysning", which is completely without vocals and in whose further four-minute course the synth sounds push themselves further and further into the foreground to have completely taken over the dominance at the end. The last track on the ten-piece album is "Fjellstev" - an eight-minute long dreamy keyboard track that consists exclusively of a single pattern, a constantly repeating sequence of a few notes, yet never gets boring and releases the listener into a dream landscape like the forest shown on the cover artwork.
