SHINING VII: Född Förlorare Digipak CD 2011

Niklas Kvarforth has spent his career making black metal that feels like it was recorded specifically to unsettle people who thought they already had a high tolerance for the uncomfortable, and VII: Född Förlorare, released in 2011, is the album where Shining's jazz-inflected misanthropy hit its most accessible and most deeply wrong stride simultaneously.

The Swedish outfit had already spent years dismantling genre expectations by the time this record dropped, dragging saxophone lines and classic rock muscle into a black metal framework that had no business working as well as it did. Född Förlorare, which translates loosely to Born a Loser, is bleakly funny if you're in the right headspace, and genuinely harrowing if you're not. This 2023 Digipak pressing of the 2011 full-length is the kind of thing that ends up in collections seriously, not as background noise.

Format: Digipak CD. Full length album. Originally released 2011, this pressing 2023. Country of origin: Sweden. Genre: Black Metal.

Fans of: Burzum, Virus, Vulture Industries.