Metal Underground.com

Every now and then, something oblique or left-of-center gets released that beckons a further listen. The Gardnerz' new one, "The System of Nature," is one such offering. Hailing from Stockholm, this quartet give us an interesting CD rich in a folkloric black metal sound that only a Northern European band could formulate. It was mixed and mastered by their drummer, Juan Pablo Donoso, down in Santiago.

From the get go, "The System of Nature" has a slower, quiet solitude to its overall sound that also belies a good, latent undercurrent of black metal. The sound is both bleak and stark, making for evocative mood music. "Incident" has some good serpentine guitar leads that entwine themselves nicely around the song body, complemented by the sinister vocals of Niklas Ankarbranth. "Your Final Solution" takes plowed-into leads and layers the guitar into a sophisticated song. One thing that The Gardnerz know how to do is change up direction and actually write songs that have movement to them, a lot like the progressive style reminiscent of Atheist.

"The System of Nature" is seeped in acoustic intros and song breaks as well. "The Art of Suffering" simmers with a graceful wrath, while "Shift in Thought" takes the acoustic riffage into a controlled nihilism of leads - transporting the listener into a desolate state of mind. Throughout the release, a dark theme of beauty prevails, evocative of an austere existence. This works very well for the bulk of the songs as a unifying theme.

The body and songwriting of tracks such as "Flaw in the Axiom" are fluid with charming simplicity, and the bass line in "More or Less" adds nice structure, but sometimes the guitar leads tend to be the achilles heel of this release. You'll see good leads by Wilhelm Lindh and another sessionist they brought in, but songs such as "Confusion" exemplify how that standard circular guitar lead employed over and over becomes redundant. That all-too-distinct guitar riff permeates many of the tracks and needs to be varied a lot more, as it sounds like they are running out of ideas.

The Gardnerz do have a very interesting, distinct ambient folk sound that highlights them from other bands in the scene. They have provided a good ethereal backdrop of sound with "The System of Nature" and would be more evocative if they would just work on some of the elements that comprise the body of their songs.