Suicide, misanthropy, terror and desperation are all words that come to mind when you first pop in Silencer’s “Death-Pierce Me” As far as terrifying music goes you can’t ask for a much better team than the ex-guitarist from Shining (Swe) and a mental patient, Nattramn.

A torrent of chilling melodies mixed with hypnotizing black metal makes the instrumentation of the album flawless. Though the real attraction are the vocals. Nattramn is famed for his vocal performance on “Death-Pierce Me” and rightly so, in the 49 minutes that comprise the album he graces us with the most tortured, psychotic and desperate voice in all of black metal, maybe even in all of music. Nattramn’s high-pitched shrieks bring to mind John Gossard of Weakling and Varg of Burzum. Structurally Silencer depend on the soft to heavy dynamic we see in other bands like Shining as well as Opeth, but the body of the album lies in the true kvlt black metal riffing inspired by Darkthrone and Burzum.

Another plus is the towering songs, which on average vary from 6-12 minutes, this gives Nattramn time to take the listener on a journey through the deepest and darkest pits of his/her psyche. Another plus for the album is that rather than separating out intermediary tracks and having intros (other than the solo piano outro) and whatnot the ambient passages are worked into the songs themselves, this makes the album much more fluid and listenable. Structurally all the songs are dynamic, which is a nice change of pace from the traditional black metal style. Rather than copying the darkthrone-esque trance inducing repetition, Silencer’s songs are constantly changing pace and going from hard to soft.

Silencer’s one and only album “Death-Pierce Me” stands as a hidden gem in depressive black metal, sadly it is the only album Nattramn and co. had the pleasure of cursing us with before he was institutionalized. Nattramn was recently released form his mental institution and now works on a dark/ambient solo project called “Diagnose: Lebensgefahr” which is also an exceptional touch of psychosis.