### Quadrivium: Adversus

#### 31/07/08 || Euthanatos

Quadrivium. Yeah, I had never heard of them before either. Apparently they’re from Norway and play “unique metal”, whatever that means. Sounds highly pretentious and I’m not really in the mood for wankers. We’ll see how this goes. Being from Norway and the band members having code names, I immediately suspected these fellas would be a black metal outfit. And since they claim to play “unique metal”, maybe they feature clean vocals and different melodies that aren’t quite as harsh as something Darkthrone would do. “A Sophic Fire” proves that I am exactly right, therefore I am a genius and you will bow to me. Now. Anyway, the clean vocals are really good, there is heavy usage of keyboards and fortunately their sound isn’t obnoxious, so I’m still mildly interested. The drums sound terribly artificial and the guitars are a bit low, but overall the production is pretty solid.

“Works of Glory” starts a bit faster (I forgot to say the first track was pretty slow), but the keyboards and slower tempo follow suit to right back where we started. Not that it’s a bad thing, just sayin’. “Svartamaal” goes along the same path, except it has a useless keyboard intermezzo. These guys are really high on keyboards. I can almost see them taking guitars out of the picture altogether. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t call this black metal at all. The only black metal feature here is the harsh vocals, which truly are black metal. The rest is pretty Arcturus like. “Haust” is an atmospheric/acoustic piece. I like this kind of stuff, so I enjoyed it, but it might get those with ADD to fall asleep. The rest of the album pretty much repeats the same formula: aggressive vocals with a few riffs, keyboards and clean vocals take over, long instrumental passages.

The feeling I get from listening to Quadrivium is that they have a hell of a lot of potential here. The creativity is obviously latent and Erlend Antonsen, who does most stuff on this record, is a seemingly talented individual. I do think, though, that a little direction is missing. A more focused production and song writing process could yield truly unique pieces. Perhaps on the next step of their evolution. This is only the band’s debut, so I’ll cut them some slack. Promising, but not yet there.

The cover: The matrix?

6 sideshow symphonies out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Soulseller Records
- Website: Quadrivium MySpace
- Band
- Erlend Antonsen: guitars, keyboards, drums, pretentiousness
- Lars Jensen: vocals
- Svein-Ivar Sarassen: bass

- Tracklist
- 01. A Sophic Fire
- 02. Works Of Glory
- 03. Svartamaal
- 04. Haust
- 05. Principal Cognizance
- 06. Nordover
- 07. Into The Void
- 08. Is
- 09. Ettertid