Artwork by: Artist Uncredited 🙁

Style: Melodic Death Metal, Industrial Metal, Electronica (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Defect, Turmion Kätilöt, Demon Hunter
Country: Finland
Release date: 18 September 2026

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Many are the tales of the tortured creative, and the attached belief by some that an artist can only create (good) art when given over to unfortunate circumstances or vices. My own views on the matter are to offer up a middle finger to the notion that an artist must be depressed, addicted, or otherwise engaged with some manner of demon in order to create something deemed “worthwhile” by our parasitic (and parasocial) society at large. That said, I can also personally attest that within the creative process lay the caltrops of depression, imposter syndrome, and other negative, self-defeating thoughts just waiting to ensnare you. Making anything takes time, patience, commitment, and—if the goal is to release it into the wider world—a willingness to lay one’s heart and soul bare upon the cold altar of criticism.

Returning from “years of burnout and creative exile”,¹ anonymous Finnish one-man composer (hereby referred to as Mr. Norn) and mastermind of Hav Norn has spun up sophomore album Laniena Animarum from an apparent newly-tapped wellspring of creative energies, following debut Halcyon earlier this year. Laniena Animarum echoes the industrial / electronic metal leanings of The Defect and a moody atmosphere replete with bleepy synths and melancholic crooning, promising songcraft drawn from the wells of deepest emotion and raw honesty. With all this time away, do Hav Norn manage to deliver on their heartfelt and earnest mission statement?

Sadly, no. The root of the issue can be found in the music itself, which, despite moments of flourish, comes across as too artificial and programmed to elicit, let alone confer, much of an emotional response. Guitars are flattened to an industrial grind, generally lost beneath the machined precision of the drums and ultimately usurped by the synths, the latter of which tend to take the lead on many of the compositions while also supplying the more engaging elements of Laniena Animarum. The pinging rhythms and central melody of “All the World Around”, for example, are catchy—especially when paired with the clean vocal segments. Mr. Norn is at his best vocally whenever he drops the abrasive howls and growls—which oscillate from decent to questionable—and focuses on delivering with his warm, moody singing. There’s not much range, but the middle zone he operates in is handled with a sense of confidence, and he knows how to string together a bit of an earworm. More than a few times during my listening cycle, I found myself humming along with the choruses (“All the World Around”, “Hush Now Sleep”, “Tomorrow is a Dream”).

However, there’s just not enough of interest happening on Laniena Animarum to warrant a recommendation. Solid chorus work and some engaging synth passages aside, Hav Norn do little to push the material beyond an initial listen. The pace is strangely languid at times, despite a fairly punchy thirty-four minute runtime, exacerbated by tracks like “Ember” that labor on without much sense of purpose or growth, content to return to the same passages without much in the way of interesting instrumentation or even a hooky chorus. “Tomorrow is a Dream” further kneecaps momentum with an awkward spoken word opener, though manages to rebound with a decent enough central melody and thought toward progression. The album never manages to push past simply being “okay” at best, boring at worst.

I don’t relish handing out low marks, in part because I empathize deeply with the struggles of creating, and especially when I can feel the sparks of potential fighting to catch upon the tinder of an artist’s work. Laniena Animarum has flickering moments—an earworm chorus here, a fun synth patterning there—but so much of it fails to render any true connection. For an album sculpted around raw honesty and emotion, that’s a mighty blow to have dealt, and I can’t help but feel that something got lost in translation between the artist’s intent and the final product. Still, there’s echoes of promise within the material. If Hav Norn can complement their decent base for catchiness with more inspired songcraft that taps more saliently into Mr. Norn’s emotional wells, then I think, just maybe, they’ll have what it takes to draw up something rich and full of life.

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Recommended tracks: All the World Around, Tomorrow is a Dream
You may also like: Nyves, Post Pulse, Enter Tragedy, Mean Messiah
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Inverse Records

Hav Norn is:
– Hav Norn (everything)

1. From Hav Norn’s Bandcamp page. ↩︎