A guitar hits first. No ramp-up, no slow fog rolling in. Just a tremolo line already moving fast, drums snapping underneath it like the band pressed record halfway through an argument. Within seconds ROSA FAENSKAP have made their intentions clear on Ingenting Forblir.
Seven songs. Thirty-seven minutes. It moves quickly because it wants to.
The Norwegian trio play black metal with a punk band’s sense of physical momentum. The guitars grind through narrow, cutting riffs that feel built for forward motion rather than atmosphere. Even when the tremolo lines stretch outward, the rhythm section keeps the music grounded. Bass stays close to the guitars. Drums push rather than decorate.
You hear that approach right away in Den svake mannen. The riff doesn’t spiral upward or creep in slowly. It lands heavy and already in motion, repeating just long enough for the rhythm to settle into your body before the drummer nudges the tempo forward again. The vocals arrive seconds later. Not distant, not ghostly. They sit right at the centre of the mix, scraped raw and delivered with the kind of intensity that feels closer to hardcore shouting than traditional black metal shrieking.
That choice reshapes the whole record.
Black metal often hides the voice inside the storm. Here it stands out. You can hear the breath before a scream, the way a phrase cracks slightly under strain. It feels confrontational. Close enough that the emotional pressure doesn’t drift away into atmosphere.
Faenskap for alltid leans into that tension. The opening riff carries a sharp rhythmic pattern, almost mechanical at first, before the melody begins to loosen and pull sideways. The drummer rides the double bass steadily rather than blasting nonstop, which makes the groove feel heavier when it locks in. The guitars begin to smear slightly under distortion, notes stretching together until the riff feels like it’s dissolving even while it’s still driving forward.
Then the band pull back for a moment.
Early in La barna leve the distortion thins and the tempo eases off. A single guitar chord rings out long enough for the overtones to bloom. Not quite shoegaze, but you can hear where that influence lives in their sound. The drums step aside for a few bars. The quiet lasts long enough for the room to open up.
And then the distortion returns with twice the weight.
The production keeps everything tight and close to the instruments. You hear the grain in the guitar tone, the dry crack of the snare, the low-end push of the bass when it digs into a repeating figure. Nothing has been polished smooth. The mix lets the edges stay rough, which suits the way these songs move. Too clean and the tension would vanish.
Klarhet i kaos begins almost deceptively. The guitar traces a tremolo figure that sounds nearly melodic, the kind of pattern that might drift if left alone. Instead the rhythm section tightens underneath it. The drummer shifts into a stomping half-time pulse, suddenly turning the melody into something heavier. The bass line slides underneath the guitar like a second shadow.
The band are careful about when to release pressure and when to keep tightening it. The songs rarely pause, but they constantly shift shape. A riff extends longer than expected. A drum pattern drops from blasts into a marching rhythm. The guitars open slightly, then collapse back into distortion.
You feel those adjustments more than you notice them.
By the time Bygg til himmelen arrives, the guitars are grinding through thick, almost sludgy chords that feel closer to hardcore than Scandinavian black metal orthodoxy. The main riff drags just slightly behind the beat, giving the whole track a lurching weight. Vocals scrape across the top of the mix, harsh but controlled, riding the rhythm rather than drowning inside it.
It’s a nasty sound. In the best way.
The band’s politics sit close to the surface of the project. Rosa Faenskap have been openly queer and anti-fascist from the start, and they don’t hide it behind metaphor or theatrics. Even the band name carries a hint of provocation. Pink badness. Pink devilry. In a genre that spent decades obsessed with grim aesthetics and macho nihilism, the trio walk in wearing eyeliner and rainbow colours and dare anyone to complain.
The music does most of the talking anyway.
Closer Jeg våkner snart stretches outward for nearly ten minutes, and the shift in pacing feels deliberate. The guitars swell rather than stab, layers of distortion folding over each other until the tremolo lines blur into a wide wash of sound. The vocals soften at the edges, still harsh but less venomous, almost reflective in places.
By that point the album has spent half an hour grinding forward at full weight. Hearing the band loosen the tension slightly feels less like a change of mood and more like a release valve opening somewhere inside the machinery.
Fysisk Format released the record out of Oslo, the same label long tied to the city’s punk and DIY scene. That context makes sense when you hear the record. For all its black metal DNA, Ingenting Forblir behaves like a punk album at heart. Urgent. Physical. Impatient with genre boundaries.
Ingenting Forblir is out now via Fysisk Format.
Photo – Stig Buvarp
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