Thirty-three short years into the business of making Norwegian black metal sound like something you found nailed to a tree, Hoest returns with En Skog av Nidstang, four long pieces of cold air, crooked melody, violent riffing and the general feeling that civilization was a temporary clerical error.
Four songs. Thirty-six minutes. No filler. No desperate attempt to impress the algorithm. Just Taake being themselves, which is increasingly impressive in an era when extreme metal sometimes seems terrified of standing still long enough to develop a personality.
The opening track, “Einstoeingen og Eg,” is the statement of intent. It does not kick the door down so much as remove the hinges and leave the building exposed to the Norwegian weather. The guitars carry that unmistakable Taake quality: raw, melodic, slightly crooked, always moving between aggression and atmosphere. The riffs don’t behave like obedient employees. They wander. They stalk. They come back when you thought they’d gone home.
And then there is “Et Dyr tok min Hud,” another expansive piece that demonstrates why Hoest has remained such a distinctive figure in black metal. This isn’t music built around speed alone. The violence is important, but so is the space between the blows. Taake understands that a riff can become more threatening when it has time to breathe.
The real monster, however, may be “Engler.” It is the album’s great slow-burner, moving with a strange, almost drunken momentum before shifting into heavier black’n’roll territory. Elegant enough to make you listen closely, filthy enough to make you wonder whether your speakers need disinfecting.
The closing “Av Guds ville Naade” brings the album home with nine minutes of gloom, aggression and expansive riffing. It feels less like a conclusion than a long walk into bad weather. The kind of walk where you eventually realize you have no idea where you are, your phone has no signal, and somehow this is exactly where you wanted to be.
Taake’s history makes this achievement more remarkable. Hoest formed the project in 1993, initially under the name Thule, before adopting the Taake name. The early years produced demos before Nattestid Ser Porten Vid arrived in 1999, followed by Over Bjoergvin Graater Himmerik in 2002 and Hordalands Doedskvad in 2005—the trilogy associated with death, Norway and the devil in man.
Those records established Taake as something more interesting than another corpse-painted Norwegian black-metal act. Hoest had an ear for melody, folk influence, rock swagger and strange structural turns. He could make a riff sound ancient without making it boring.
En Skog av Nidstang continues that tradition while sounding deliberately stripped back. The album was recorded in the forests south of Bergen with production centered on rudimentary tools, intuition and isolation rather than studio polish.
And that matters in 2026.
Extreme metal is more technically accomplished than ever. There are bands playing riffs that require the listener to possess an advanced mathematics degree. Production can be enormous. Drums can sound like artillery. Everything can be perfectly synchronized.
Taake offers something different.
Character.
Because the great achievement here isn’t that Taake has reinvented black metal. They haven’t. They don’t need to. Their contribution to today’s extreme-metal landscape is more stubborn and, frankly, more valuable: they demonstrate that originality can come from digging deeper into your own language rather than chasing whatever happens to be fashionable.
En Skog av Nidstang sounds human. It has rough edges. It takes its time. It occasionally seems to go off into the woods and forget that albums are supposed to control themselves.
Good.
Let it wander.
Donnie’s Rating: 9/10
