The most striking thing about En Känsla Av Hopplöshet is how often Tårfödd finds beauty in the midst of desolation and despair. The guitars can be abrasive, the vocals are frequently reduced to harsh, tortured screams and the atmosphere is drenched in abject melancholy. Yet underneath all of that darkness, there is a clear appreciation and understanding of melody that shines through. It is that tension between beauty and ugliness that gives the album its emotional pull.
Tårfödd is the solo project of Swedish musician Simon Lindgren, who has been extraordinarily prolific since forming it in 2022. En Känsla Av Hopplöshet is already his seventh full-length, following Mörker täcker livets ljus and the Skyfall EP earlier in 2026. Lindgren handles guitars, bass, vocals, drum programming, production and mixing himself, making Tårfödd a project that is laser-focussed and always coherent. It’s also worth noting that the drum programming has been done to an extraordinarily high standard here, it’s something that has been the downfall of many a solo album, but Lindgren has somehow managed to make the drums sound impressively natural here.
The personal element to the record is particularly important. En Känsla Av Hopplöshet translates roughly as “A Feeling of Hopelessness”, and the album was written following the loss of someone close to Lindgren. The resulting themes of grief, absence, loneliness and regret are the threads that hold this record together, with track names that include “Heartbreak”, “Total Darkness” and “It Never Goes Away” (assuming my Swedish translation is up to scratch).
Musically, however, Lindgren doesn’t simply hammer the listener with misery for 47 minutes. The opening I Spåren Av Pestens Art begins with almost three minutes of classically-influenced, acoustic guitar before the distorted guitars and blast beats eventually arrive. This isn’t anything particularly original in itself, but the execution of it here is what strengthens the song. The acoustic passages are beautiful. Not beautiful in the polished, comforting sense, but in a way that makes the subsequent eruption of distortion feel almost cruel.
Where Lindgren really excels, is in his ability to bring a spacious, atmospheric quality to the guitar melodies. There is so much raw emotion within the lead lines that you often find yourself with a lump in your throat. I challenge anyone who writes black metal off as “overly aggressive, one-dimensional noise” (yes, I have heard these exact words used before) to listen to A Dark And Cloudy Dream and tell me it isn’t an exceptionally breathtaking piece of music! There is a cinematic quality here that is both expansive and personal, giving the impression of enormous, rain-soaked landscapes whilst simultaneously making you want to call up your close friends and tell them you love them.
However, that’s not to say that Tårfödd isn’t afraid of indulging in more direct black-metal aggression either. In I En Satans Misär, the guitars are rawer and more direct, with driving tremolo riffs and a rough-edged production that gives the track a distinctly old-school feel. There’s less of the spacious, cinematic atmosphere found elsewhere on the record and more of that grimy, relentless momentum associated with classic Scandinavian black metal. It feels almost deliberately primitive, and the album is all the better for it!
And that’s exactly why En Känsla Av Hopplöshet works so well. The quieter moments don’t feel like interludes between the “proper” black metal. They are the emotional core of it. The record understands that sometimes the most devastating thing you can do after screaming yourself into a frenzy is to to cease screaming at all.
Ultimately, En Känsla Av Hopplöshet succeeds because its darkness isn’t one-dimensional. It isn’t simply an album that sounds miserable. It’s an album that sounds hurt, or possibly damaged…and that difference is significant. It’s bleak, atmospheric and at times immensely beautiful. It’s an album where the darkness creeps in all around you, but the light never disappears completely…and that fragile glimmer is what makes this record all the more powerful.
Best Paired with – an Ordnance Survey map, a good understanding of local weather patterns and a dented hip-flask.
Reviewed by Bryn.
Tårfödd – En Känsla Av Hopplöshet is out now on Purity Through Fire.
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