Wind’s Poem has often been called Phil Elvrum’s “black metal” album. While one might hear the influence of Burzum and Xasthur on songs like “Wind’s Dark Poem,” Wind’s Poem is darker and more existential and foreboding — and more intimate and personal — than most black metal albums I’ve heard. Elvrum is transfixed by the ephemerality of existence and the fragility of man in the face of nature, singing “Nothing means nothing/Everything is fleeting” and “Hold on to something and watch it go/Everything you love will end up on the breeze” — lyrics made even more stirring by his soft, tremulous voice.

Elvrum fully embraces impermanence, but on “Between Two Mysteries,” he offers, not hope exactly, but a beacon of sorts. Accompanied by the synth melody from “Laura Palmer’s Theme” from Twin Peaks and alien gamelan tones, Elvrum is seemingly ready to end it all (“Driving to work in the morning/We live in graves/Always trying to climb out of the hole”). But the final stanza contains a tenuous reason to continue: “The shapes in the dark still look convincing/So here I am.”

Elvrum’s lyrics resist simple interpretations, but to my ears, they evoke something beyond this world, a dark mystery that makes existence bearable.