Shining - 8 ½ – Feberdrommar I Vaket Tillstand

Sick! I think this is the most suitable word to describe Shining’s music, if that’s possible! The “perverse” band from Sweden strikes back with a new album which features “old songs”. Well, not so much a new one… but surely the re-recordings of the songs, with new bass, guitars and the addition of synth, have been done carefully. What’s more? You should always expect more from “bizarre” figures like Kvarforth.
 
Well, the 6 songs that have been re-recorded here feature 6 different singers along with Niklas Kvarforth. A good idea, which has been proven even better in action. Shining are looking back somewhere in their early 00s years and they re-present some of their old songs, with some addition on each one of them, so as to make ‘em sound better & updated. The use of keys has given a dark & atmospheric essence to the tracks while each vocalist gives his own performance. Analytically, we have: Famine (Peste Noire) on “Terres Des Anonymes”, Attila Csihar (Mayhem, ex-Tormentor) on “Szabadulj Meg Onmagatol”, Pehr Larsson (Alfahanne) on “Ett Liv Utan Mening”, Gaahl (Godseed, ex-Gorgoroth ) on “Selvdestruktivitetens Emissarie”, Maniac (ex-Mayhem) on “Black Industrial Misery” & Kvarforth on the last “Through Corridors of Oppression”, which is also the most atmospheric tune on the album. The production is good & active without the wastage of its “shitty/raw” character though.
 
I do think that none would have expected from Shining to do things the usual & conventional way and that’s why they have such loyal fans around the world, regardless of their strange, depressive, sick, black, negative, suicidal, cold & extreme metal music. Shining was never a “mainstream extreme metal” band for consumption. The band’s die-hard fans will revel in this release… as for the rest, better stay away, especially if you don’t fancy “weird, obscure, bleak & ill” stuff…