Part banshee-voiced member of a witches’ coven, part Sweden’s highbrow answer to Mogwai, Anna von Hausswolff is a genuine one-off. Her third album, inspired by a place from her youth that was once the backdrop to a peasants’ revolt, is largely played by von Hausswolff on a 9,000-pipe organ and from first note to last is impossibly intense. Its huge, bone-crushing, folk-goes-metal songs are given extra heft by her otherworldly wail that conjures up images of human sacrifice and a society on the verge of collapse. As such it’s not always the easiest of listens, but the boldness of her vision is compelling, especially on Discovery and the title track, where beauty and raw power interact.
