Do you ever hear a punk song and think, “Sure, I’d also like to overthrow the establishment, but couldn’t you learn to play guitar a bit better?” Have you ever found yourself embarrassed to be banging your head to a sick black metal riff written and performed by one of the world’s most repugnant lowlifes? Yes. So have thousands of our brethren in every squat and co-op from Greece to Iceland; and as is their wont, they have taken matters into their own grubby hands, pressing a huge variety of records that radiate out from the collision of metal and hardcore in every hue and shade, from the bilious How Hate is Hard to Define to the cerulean Archivist. Rosa Faenskap, unsurprisingly, fit themselves into the long-wavelength end of that rainbow.
Practicing a particularly dark and frostbitten form of Euro-Lefty-Black-Hardcore, Rosa Faenskap find themselves between the vicious pallor of Thurm and the sanguine rage of Svalbard, on occasion reflecting a few fleeting tones from the early Plebeian Grandstand records. Emil Vestre grinds out icy tremolo leads as jagged as they come, crashing and crackling in coupled cacaphony with vocalist Håvard Solli’s snarling bass; in the pre-breakdown chug and pick-scrape of “Faenskap for alltid,” you’d swear you were standing six feet away from their amplifier in a damp Oslo basement. Drummer Anders Jansvik’s performance is likewise big and booming. Whatever the trio might lack, it’s not energy.
Ingenting Forblir by Rosa Faenskap
Though Rosa Faenskap are pretty green, this sophomore record is remarkably focused, holding its space through force and fury, hammering a few riffs as harshly as possible before their close. “Den Svake Mannen” rides a rung-out arpeggio so continuously that you can still hear it when Vestre switches over to tremolos, but I’m never disappointed to hear them return to it halfway through the song. “Faenskap for Alltid” pursues a more straightforward black metal at first, expertly executing a couple of stock tremolo metal riffs with a panache that I’m surprised to hear outside of a Spectral Wound record before the band shift from blackened to bruising, stomping through a breakdown and proclaiming “faenskap for alltid!” again and again.
Ingenting Forblir’s success stands in part on the band’s canny writing, but is far more indebted to its quality of sound. The record’s production and mix, handled by the band in collaboration with Oskar Johnsen Ryd and Torfinn Sommerfeldt Lysne, respects the vitality of the material, sounding live and livid. My only complaint is that Jansvik’s drums can get buried during busy sections, in part due to a muffled snare tone. Despite a low-DR master, the record is dynamic where it needs to be; when the band leave Vestre alone and pensive with their guitar, the quiet registers, and I feel myself slipping a bit closer in towards the record.
“Jeg Våkner Snart” closes Ingenting Forblir as the band’s most ambitious and successful song, layering tremolo leads over gang vocals, retreating into quiet, reverberating melody, and ending in a boiling conflagration of noise. For a sophomore record leaner and meaner than the band’s 2023 debut, it’s just the right ending. Ingenting Forblir hardly breaks new musical ground, but Rosa Faenskap’s sour determination will likely propel it into my regular listening rotation this year. In practice, I might not be up for faenskap for alltid, but I’ll happily recommend faenskap for lenge.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Fysisk Format
Websites: rosafaenskap.com | rosafaenskap.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: March 6th, 2026
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