For my final look at German metal I’m going to actively seek out a Black Metal album, just so I can’t be accused of only listening to the sort of Metal I enjoy. I’m sure with Germany’s dark past, both mythological and historical, there will be one or two lurking just out of sight around the corner.
Pray for me…
Okay, okay! I realise I’m cheating slightly here. So it’s atmospheric Black Metal with a strong interest in Norse mythology: it’s still categorised as Black Metal, huh? Hey, I could hate it, you know? Though considering that the band took their name from the Rainbow Bridge that spans the space between Midgard and Asgard (man I love Norse mythos!) that seems unlikely. Perhaps something along the lines of the Bathory albums I reviewed for the Viking Metal segment? Huh? Huh?
Meh, have it your own way. This is the one I’m going for anyway, and it comes highly recommended by some guy I met online, so this is where I end my very brief and not at all inclusive look at what Germany has to offer in the way of Heavy Metal. I guess I could have spent the whole month trawling through the many and varied bands, and subgenres, to come out of this country, but I wanted to ensure that I looked at a different country each week, and so here, for now at any rate, is where we end up.
Rain upon the impure --- The Ruins of Beverast --- 2006 (Van Records)
What’s really interesting, and disturbing, about this band is that the album after this is titled “Foulest semen of a sheltered elite”, which sounds more like something Cryptopsy (yes, them again! My sleep will forever be tortured by remembrances of their horrible music) would release, but that’s not the one I’m going for. As an aside, looking at the track listing for that album I don’t see any nasty or questionable song titles, so maybe it’s just the album title that’s a little risque? Anyway as I say, this is the one I’ve chosen and it’s their second album, in a career that has been relatively fresh, the band only forming in 2003. Yes I know that’s eleven years together, more than many other bands manage, but some of the acts I’ve looked at here have been around since the 80s, so it doesn’t seem as long a period.
I’ve also had my fill of the German tongue (ooer!) --- sorry you natives but it’s an awfully harsh language, as I’ve said before, and I don’t like not being able to talk about the lyrics, unless the music is really good. So another factor in my choosing this album has been that all the songs are sung in English! Hooray! Whether or not I’ll be able to make out the vocals (Black Metal is one of those that does tend to favour the harsh, scratchy or roared growly vocals, as I've been made more than uncomfortably aware of) is another matter, but we’ll see, We open with “50 forts on the Rhine”, presumably the recounting of some ancient battle, and I note it’s thirteen minutes long! The next one is fifteen! Oh dear. The sound of galloping horses and the cries of battle are drowned out by a big roar and hammering guitars, and it looks like the laugh is on me. Ambient? This doesn’t sound f
ucking ambient!
It’s pretty much the same guitar riff for two minutes, with crashing drums and no sign yet of a vocal, though that roar was far from encouraging! Kind of a choral vocal though breaking out in the background, but we’re now four minutes in and all I can hear is a horrible deathly growl. Whether that’s supposed to be the vocals or not I don’t know, but if so then there’s egg on my face: I am NOT going to enjoy this! The guitars drop back then to a more restrained, almost acoustic level, with kind of pealing bells in the melody, dark thunder rolling and then a stronger guitar coming back in. Now I look, I see this is all the work of a single individual, one Alexander von Mellenweld. Sounds like a demon to me! But fair play to him if he does all this himself. Maybe those lyric sheets won’t be needed after all!
I’m sure Batty is laughing his ass off at me. I thought this was going to be something like When Bitter Spring Sleeps. Um, yeah. Not quite. I can’t make out a single vocal; I don’t mean to be cruel but it sound more like a rabid dog or some madman trying to break free. So let’s ignore the vocals --- such as they are ---and, Panopticonlike, concentrate on the music, which has returned to harsh guitar but at least it’s got a certain melody to it. Oh wait! I understood a few words there! Ol’ Alex dropped his voice an octave and I caught a sentence about being at war, or something. Didn’t last though.
So we have a fifteen minute track after this, another fifteen minute one, a sixteen and a fourteen minute, so even with only seven tracks this still runs close to an hour and a half. As I said, pray for me. So much for my easy exit! Guitar work is damn good, and to be honest were there no vocals I would probably appreciate this more. Still, it’s going to be something of a slog to the end if it’s all like this. “Soliloquy of the stigmatised shepherd” (what’s with these weird song titles? What happened to “Satan is our pal?”) has another heavy guitar opening, the sound at times like someone is trying to throttle the instrument using its own strings. It’s heavy as all hell, that’s for sure, and dark as fu
ck, but so far it’s kind of all a little too much of the same. I hardly realised the first track had ended and the second begun. I guess if you had to have a soundtrack to Armageddon as Satan’s minions swarmed over the Earth harvesting souls, this could be it.
Wait just one tension-popping moment! There’s a real ambient guitar there, and something that could be a synth in the background. A harder guitar takes over, but the quieter one remains in the background, not giving up, sort of like an acolyte standing aside as its master reveals himself. Again, ooeer! Seems this guy is a member of Nagelfar, which I know to be the ship of the dead that Surt will sail at the end of days, as Ragnarok falls upon the world (see, I know this stuff!) and so his interest in Norse legend is understandable. Meanwhile, this song has taken something of a turn for the weird, or weirder. It’s much slower, doom metal slow, and now there’s an odd chimy guitar sort of clanging away too. Nice kind of choral vocal going there, supposedly on the keyboards if he does everything himself.
I never quite understand why vocalists like this sing as they do. The lyrics to the songs are quite impressive, but I have no chance in hell of ever hearing a word or understanding it --- I did better with Rammstein! --- and so can only read them. This appears to be the lament of a shepherd forced to walk the world, possibly immortal --- Kane? But this album seems based on Norse folklore, although the battle referred to in the opener seemed to be from Germanic history. Maybe. Hard to tell. Very dramatic sound now as the synths push to try to dislodge the skullcrushing guitar, but it’s having none of it.
The annoying thing --- for me --- is that this could be a decent album if I could understand what was being sung --- caught some words there at the end --- but there’s just no way to do that. Guess you have to be into Black Metal to really appreciate what’s going on here. Nice fadeout on the guitar. There’s a short, atmospheric synth piece then --- just over a minute --- before we launch into another fifteen-minuter, this time titled “Blood vaults (I: Thy virginal malodour)” --- snappy title. Don’t think I’ll want to hang around for II, which doesn’t appear to be on this album. It’s another constant riff on the guitar with attendant growls, pretty much more of the same really. Sneak a look at the lyric, why don’t we?
Um, yeah. I think it’s about a witch or witches waiting in a cell to be burned. Or it could be more cerebral than that. Hard to tell. Or care, if I’m honest. Seems to have entered a kind of pealing, ringing deal, presumably either meant to represent the tolling of a death bell or just a general image of Christianity which, given this is Black Metal, Alex is surely against. Dark kind of whispering and chanting adds to the unsettling atmosphere, and you can actually imagine some poor victim of the Inquisition languishing in a cell, condemned out of hand and waiting to be burned at the stake. The Church has a lot to answer for.
There’s a sixteen minute track to follow; “Soil of the incestuous” opens with a female voice (perhaps a recording, as nobody else is, um, credited here) saying
”I am the wandering moon and sun/ The rabbit and the snake/ The virgin and the rapist my shadow” --- nice to hear at least some words I can make out. Has a nice melodious guitar to it too, though of course that doesn’t last. Generally, throughout its run it’s more of the same, though the female voice does come in once more. The only really short actual track is up next, with some sort of allusion to Norse mythology with the mention of the world serpent Jormungand, but I don’t recognise “Balnaa-Keill the Bleak” from Norse legend. At least it’s short, which is about all I can say good about this.
Unfair of course. I’m sure this is considered essential music in Black Metal circles, and some has labelled this album a masterpiece, but it’s so removed from what I enjoy or can tolerate that it’s mostly just noise to me. Again that’s unfair: there is music, very discernible, but it’s kind of like a wall of sound, hard to pull any meaning or melody from it. Hum Factor definitely zero!
This track is quiet, other than the gutteral vocal, with kind of synth noises and a screeching guitar but quite low in the mix, then we’re into --- finally, and with significant relief on my part --- the closer, but temper that relief with horror, because as we know it’s another epic.
It’s the title track as it happens, and it’s fourteen minutes and change, opening with in fairness a nice reflective guitar, though that hammering one is always there, a constant in the music, like the beat of a metronome or a black heart. High-pitched choral vocals and slow drumming as Alex rails against, it seems, the hypocrisy of the Church and Christ in general. Ah bless! He throws in part of a mass, just to underline the point. Then it all goes into overdrive on bombing drums and, well, fast guitar. You know, I went out of the room, downstairs, let my cat in, comforted him as he has been stalked by a dog, gave him some food and came back up and the SAME melody and rhythm is still playing! So I guess I didn’t miss much…
Well, only about four minutes left to suffer, I mean go. I’ll be glad when this is over. And now it is. With a final tortured scream from one of no doubt his many guitars, Alex brings this one hour twenty minute torment to a shuddering close, and I can tell you, I shudder!
TRACKLISTING
1. 50 forts along the Rhine
2. Soliloquy of the stigmatised shepherd
3. Rapture
4. Blood vaults (I: Thy virginal malodour)
5. Soil of the incestuous
6. Balnaa-Kheil the Bleak
7. Rain upon the impure
So I guess fate has the last laugh on me, didn’t she? Thinking I would defeat the letter of the law with the spirit of the law, as it were, I ended up entangled in a horrible web of screaming, growling vocals, brain-pounding guitars and thundering drums, an ordeal that went on for what seemed a lot longer than the eighty minutes shown. That’ll teach me, huh? Not quite as bad as Cryptopsy, sure, but still well up there with the worst I’ve heard in a long time, which is not to denigrate the music or the artiste, I just am so not into this kind of music it’s untrue. I’m sure many of you out there are scratching your heads and saying “How can he be saying that about one of my favourite German Black Metal albums?” Well, you’re welcome to it!
And so ends my brief foray through the Metal landcape of Germany. Been fun, sort of. Got to hear some good bands, some okay bands and some downright painful bands. There’s no question that Germany is both one of the founders and continues to be one of the leaders in the field of Heavy Metal, and there’s a rich and varied mix of subgenres out there, the surface of which I have of course only barely scratched this past week. But it’s time to move on, not too far this time, and next week as Metal Month moves into its third quarter I’ll be heading south, over the border to Spain, to see what they have to offer.