Gösta Berlings Saga – Forever Now – Album Review
20th May 2025What in the name of Carl Jung’s ghost just happened to my ears? I hit play on Forever Now and thirty seconds later I was upside down in a beanbag chair, speaking in palindromes and bleeding Morse code from my nose. Gösta Berlings Saga don’t play music — they summon it, like cultists with pedalboards and anxiety disorders.
“Full Release” kicks off like a toaster having a breakdown in a factory made of lasers. The drums are running from something. The synths are trying to leave the album and live independently in Oslo. Every instrument is arguing with its own shadow. It’s not a song; it’s a nervous system on fire.
Then comes “Through The Arches”, and you think, “Oh, maybe I’m safe here.” WRONG. It grabs your eardrums like a claw machine full of regrets. Guitars jitter like a cockroach with a philosophy degree. Have you ever seen a cello cry? Me neither, but this track sounds like it.
“Arrangements”. More like disarrangements duct-taped to the wall of an abandoned observatory. Everything’s locked in, sure, but it shouldn’t be. Like the bassline got a job at NASA, and the drums are still working retail. Nothing makes sense, but everything works. Possibly black magic.
“Forever Now” is where I levitated three inches off the ground and spoke fluent decimal. There’s a section halfway through that made my teeth itch. I don’t know what time signature it’s in — probably hexadecimal. All I know is, my bones were rearranged like IKEA furniture cursed by a prog wizard.
“The Sprig and the Birch” sounds like a tree whispering nuclear secrets into a haunted mixing board. Ethereal? No. Try a damp and prophylactic. There’s an accordion ghost in there somewhere. I can feel it. It knows what I did.
“Fragment II”. Cool. Love a song that sounds like a surveillance tape from inside a meat locker inside your mind. Glitchy. Twitchy. Paranoid. It’s short but leaves you blinking like you just saw a raccoon put on a tie and go to work.
“Ascension.”This is what plays when your consciousness breaks its lease and moves into the ceiling. Every time you think it’s peaked, the song finds another staircase. Infinity stairs. The drums are carving sigils into your hippocampus. The synths are building something. Probably a church. Probably to themselves.
“Dog Years”. This one’s got teeth. This track walks like it’s trying to sneak past its own therapist. The rhythm section is clearly up to something. No one’s playing nice. It’s funky, sure, but like, end-of-the-world funk. Like Parliament Funkadelic, but they’ve seen things and can’t sleep anymore.
“Make of Your Heart a Stone.” Who hurt these guys? This thing breathes like a dying VHS tape whispering confessions. Cold, slow, grand, awful, holy. It feels like it knows something about you that you don’t. I wanted to turn it off. I didn’t.
And then “Ceremonial”. The finale. Not so much a song as a procession. Every sound walks by in solemn robes, eyes forward, saying nothing. You just watch. You just accept. The last few minutes of this thing are similar to being smothered by the truth. In stereo.
Gösta Berlings Saga don’t make music — they cracked open the architecture of time and left the recording running.
Score 7/10
Track-list:
1. Full Release
2. Through The Arches
3. Arrangements
4. Forever Now
5. The Sprig and the Birch
6. Fragment II
7. Ascension
8. Dog Years
9. Make of Your Heart a Stone
10. Ceremonial
Label: Pelagic Records
Release: 6 June 2025
