Given their material, you’d think that Ironwood came straight from the frozen forests of Norway or Finland, rather than their actual hometown of Sydney, Australia. They claim inspiration from old Norse poetry, but rather than settle into the Viking metal mold, create songscapes to reflect their lyrics. There are the expected blackened and marching passages, but most of the material on their self-titled demo meanders through everything from ambient nature sounds (the opening of Veer is the sound of rain) to doom and avant-garde acoustic. Certainly, the Australian quintet aren’t lacking in the ambition or vision departments, and they can handle their instruments well; most of the individual portions of songs are very tightly played. Unfortunately, they’re also plagued by a few problems, arising both from the raw production and the rather unfocused way the songs are put together.

As it’s a demo, I might just be being picky in looking at the production, but it’s one of the two main problems plaguing Ironwood. While the buzzsaw sound works well for the blackened passages, it creates problems elsewhere. For one thing, even though half the vocals are clean, I can’t understand a single word being sung. Given that Ironwood’s music is based so strongly on lyrics and poetry, this is something of a problem. I certainly don’t mind incomprehensible vocals (given how much I like Cryptopsy, I certainly bear no bias in that department) but something seems a bit amiss here, rather as if I had been abandoned by my guide in the middle of some dark Nordic wood. Beyond vocal tomfoolery, the raw production also interferes in some of the more intense musical passages as well; again, while it adds to the black elements, it severely hinders pretty much everything else. There are some very sweeping moments in Veer and Song Of The Dane that would be downright majestic, if they weren’t trying to make my eardrums bleed.

Unfortunately, a lot of the ambient, storytelling effect is lost because of this. The first song, Veer, clocks in at just over eleven minutes, and goes through several fairly radical sonic shifts, diving into blackened Viking metal from soft acoustic melodies and back again. The effect should be like traversing a wild, unpredictable terrain, but just ends up fading into the background. The ambient passages aren’t intense enough to fully build an atmosphere, and the production problems turn the rest into static. The same thing happens in the two remaining (and shorter) tracks, although the middle track, The Tree, is downright beautiful. It remains ambient and acoustic all the way through; because of this, the production doesn’t hinder it, and its effect is striking.

The loss of the storytelling effect only exacerbates the other main problem Ironwood suffers from; because the two longer songs change styles so often and so quickly, with little or no transition, there’s a general lack of coherence to the songwriting. Certain passages will jump out at the listener, but most of the time the music fades into the background, stubbornly refusing to stay at the forefront of consciousness. The very last passage in Song Of The Dane, for example, beginning about a minute before the end, grabbed my attention more than any other part of Ironwood’s demo. The song strips away into a single unbelievably catchy gothic doom riff (if doom can be said to be “catchy”). It would be perfectly at home on a Candlemass or Moonspell album, but instead ends our journey through Ironwood.