Band:	Hjarnidaudi
Album:	Pain:Noise:March
Style:	Drone doom metal
Release date:	January 2006

01. Pain
02. Noise
03. March

Boundaries are there to cross. Especially in music. If they wouldn't be crossed all the time, you all wouldn't be reading this review, and that would be a damn shame, wouldn't it? Nowadays, one of the most extreme music is played in the realm of Doom Metal. Combining the slow, agonizing Doom with the inner annihilation of Drone, these bands have created a genre that it is definitely not for the weak.

One of the bands that does this best, is the Norwegian Hjarnidaudi, one-man-project of Vidar Ermesjø formerly of Hlidolf fame. After Hlidolf's spaced-out hymn to the Void, he decided it was time to shift over to a new form, a new atmosphere, one that is not based upon bleak solitary, but based upon scorching intensity. If that was really his primary goal, is unknown to me, but he has definitely reached it.

Enter "Pain:Noise:March". From the opening seconds, a guitar intertwines slow, singular notes into pulverising dissonance. He repeats this over and over again, until your brain turns into mush. After a couple of minutes, it slowly changes, only to continue the horrifying process. A sudden silence, you try to draw your breath. Only then you realize that there was no silence, but only the sound of a brooding impending doom. Your nerves are tested to the point where they fail. A sudden burst, and then you are overwhelmed by a climax, a heat as intense as a thousand suns, a blazing ray of cosmic energy, shredding the flesh of your bones.

And that was only the first song, two more to come. But I shall not give away anymore. It is best to find out for yourself, as this is truly something you should experience and not only read about on the web. And for me? I abandoned my social life, school, work, everything, so I can focus on two activities only: the first is to undergo this experience again and again, the second one is to wait in agony for the second album to come.