🎶 Tarfödd
🌎Skellefteå, Sweden
📀 En Känsla Av Hopplöshet
® Purity Through Fire
📅 28/09/2026
TÅRFÖDD, the solo project of Swedish musician Simon Lindgren, seem determined to keep their audience from running out of new material to explore. En Känsla Av Hopplöshet (“A Feeling of Hopelessness”) is Lindgren’s third full-length release of 2026 and the project’s seventh album in just four years, further confirming his remarkable creative productivity.
Lindgren has stated that the inspiration for this particular album came from the loss of someone very close to him. Feelings of loss, grief, and a profound, almost tangible sense of despair permeate every second of the record. What truly sets it apart, however, is the way Lindgren chooses to communicate these emotions to the listener.
The nearly three-minute acoustic guitar introduction to the almost ten-minute “I Sparen Av Pestens Art” (“In the Footsteps of the Plague”), along with the entirety of “A Dark Cloudy Dream”, which stands as the album’s defining highlight, reveals the compositional intent behind this approach. TÅRFÖDD do not settle for a one-dimensional representation of sorrow but instead seek to capture the different emotional fluctuations that accompany loss. This approach can be associated with the stages of grief as described by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, without suggesting that the music follows this particular model in a strict or linear fashion.
The gentle, melodic passages that play a central role throughout much of the album could be likened to the stages of depression or even the quiet acceptance of loss, creating moments of introspection and fragile serenity. The familiar black metal blast beats evoke those phases in which denial acts as a temporary defence mechanism, beneath which deeper and harsher emotions continue to simmer. Lindgren’s desperate, abyssal screams encapsulate anger and despair, while the clean vocals convey the individual’s attempt to negotiate with themselves in an effort to comprehend an otherwise incomprehensible situation.
TÅRFÖDD’s previous EP, Skyfall, released just four months earlier, was rawer, more aggressive, and more stripped back. Here, Lindgren broadens his musical horizons. The short interval between the two releases does not necessarily allow us to speak of an overall artistic evolution; it does, however, reveal a conscious desire for differentiation, helping Lindgren avoid recycling the same compositional ideas.
En Känsla Av Hopplöshet moves beyond the confines of traditional depressive black metal, frequently approaching both the emotionally expressive territory of post-black metal and the dreamy, ethereal soundscapes of blackgaze. The transitions between slow, melodic passages and more aggressive mid- and high-tempo sections highlight the emotional rollercoaster experienced by those left behind after a profound loss. These shifts also provide the necessary variety for Lindgren to venture into ten-minute compositions without exhausting the listener, while allowing them to coexist harmoniously with shorter, more densely structured tracks.
Beyond the outstanding “A Dark Cloudy Dream”, the two most representative tracks are undoubtedly the opening “I Sparen Av Pestens Art” and the title track, which brings this musical journey to its conclusion. Together, these three songs offer approximately twenty minutes of musical storytelling, capturing the full range of Lindgren’s compositional approach, from fragile melodic beauty to raw aggression.
En Känsla Av Hopplöshet is not a groundbreaking statement destined to rewrite the history of black metal, nor is that its purpose. Simon Lindgren instead opens a small gateway into his inner world, allowing listeners to venture into his psyche and, perhaps, share in his pain. Because, ultimately, music is not merely sound, technique, or aesthetics; above all, it is emotion. And with En Känsla Av Hopplöshet, Simon Lindgren proves that he knows exactly how to transform it into music.
★ 8,5/10
✍🏻 Kostas Boudoukos
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