Review: Tjaktjadálvve - Encompassing Nothingness (2026)
Tjaktjadálvve’s Encompassing Nothingness (7/10). This Swedish Atmospheric Black Metal release delivers solid morose soundscapes with a touch of cosmic experimentation. Read more!
Band: Tjaktjadálvve
Album: Encompassing Nothingness
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal
Country: Sweden
Label: Flowing DownwardReleased: Febuary 15, 2026
Introduction
Easter as time of year reminds us of whats truly most important in life. Music that makes you feel like you’re trudging through the forest on your way to kill every motherf***er you can before the earth swallows you hole. For this reason, I am glad to have an excuse to talk about the latest release from Tjaktjadálvve.
Encompassing Nothingness
Tracklist:
- The Solitude of Abject Darkness
- Norrsken
- Longing
- Encompassing Nothingness
Rumination
So if you’ve been following underground black metal for enough years, the name Matt Bell should be pretty well known to you, from his countless projects (Autumn’s Dawn/Skuggor/Forlorn Citadel to name a few). Amongst these are the very Burzum worshippey sounds of Tjaktjadálvve. One thing that makes Tjaktjadálvve unique is how it takes the roughness of a similar project like skuggor but focuses it solely on morose atmospheric black metal. With this latest release Encompassing Nothingness (the third release) the project delivers 4 tracks of solid atmospheric BM.
I really have to highlight how good the vocals are on this one. The production has them come through just perfectly and the guy has the right voice for this stuff.
More or less, if you like Filosofem or Bilskirnir and everything that came after it, you’ll like this. The core of this album doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any way but if (like me) you just really enjoy this sound, its a really easy release to get lost in.
On the flipside though, one thing that really is a trip on this album has to be the last track. It seems to take the concept of that blip tone sinewave synth thats all over early atmospheric black metal and then he tries to combine that basic idea with the ravey cosmic synths of stuff like Mesarthim.
Honestly i’m not even mad about, I actually really appreciate that someone would try and do that. It’s an idea thats lost on me because I was never into Mesarthim but I really like hearing people try and take an idea and impose it in another place, it usually produces some pretty cool results.
Conclusion
Overall this 3rd effort from Tjaktjadálvve manages to spend 75 percent of its time doing a pretty good job of its core sound and the last 25 percent trying to push that sound into new territory. I think it’s very easy for people who have a ton of projects to release a lot of “who the f**k cares” material, but honestly this isn’t the case with Tjaktjadálvve. If you like this sort of sound you should take half an hour to check this one out.
BMZ Rating: 7/10
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