August 7, 2019

Der Rote Milan - Moritat

By Hera Vidal. As someone who primarily consumes black metal during the hot summer months, I tend to view it as something that will heighten my misery. After all, black metal has the strangest texture and sound – it can be haunting, beautiful and melodic, or downright sinister
By Hera Vidal.


As someone who primarily consumes black metal during the hot summer months, I tend to view it as something that will heighten my misery. After all, black metal has the strangest texture and sound – it can be haunting, beautiful and melodic, or downright sinister to the point where you consider it to be a murder ballad. Der Rote Milan’s newest album, Moritat, not only touches upon the adventures of Schinderhannes, a German outlaw akin to Robin Hood, but it also elevates what is known as the “murder ballad”, a form of song that discusses crime or a gruesome death.

One of the first things that caught my attention was the sheer heaviness Moritat employs. While there are moments of softness, the atmosphere is heavy with dread and uncertainty. While listening to the record, I couldn’t help but like there was a noose tied around my neck, making my anxiety palpable the more the record reached completion. The music is heavy with chugging guitars and embedded vocal elements – as if the harsh vocals weren’t enough, you can also hear death rattles, signifying people’s demises. However, the heaviness isn’t just death and all his friends; it’s also highly enjoyable, making the listener want to headbang or, at the very least, tap their foot along to the beat.

Moritat is a form of concept album – it looks at various stories where Schinderhannes plays a role, and it’s set in the backdrop of the Thirty Years’ War, which, to put it lightly, was a major religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics that eventually culminated into a continuation of the France-Habsburg rivalry for political dominance. Within this setting, Schinderhannes is a folk hero who steals from the (coded as wealthy) French from one side of the Rhine to give to the (coded as poor) Germans on the other. This adds to the grimness and the macabre atmosphere on Moritat offers. What you are getting is death and blood in spades, and you have to sit through this album and wonder whether or not your hands are also covered in red.

However, it’s at final track “Moritat” where things become truly devastating. Here, the epitome of the murder ballad comes rearing its ugly head, making me think of “Mack the Knife” from The Threepenny Opera. Although “Mack the Knife” has a whimsical tone to it – it does end happily – there is a sinister undertone that underlies the character of Mack. In the Opera, he is a rapist, murderer, and seducer of underage girls – he’s a candidate for hanging. In the case of the album, “Moritat” talks about Schinderhannes’s death – or what could be considered to be his death – and ends on the harrowing note that death and destruction is upon us, slowly fading away until there is nothing left but the screams of the dead. What a way to wrap up the album.

All in all, Moritat is a powerful album whose themes of war and death seem incredibly relevant to what we are seeing today in the current political stage. Although the increasing rivalry between the U.S. and Russia seems to echo the French-Habsburg rivalry as implied on the album, Moritat make it seem more human with the story of Schinderhannes, and it allows us to feel empathy for a character who was seen as a folk hero. It’s a wonderful record, and one that will most likely land in my EOY list for black metal. Of course I need to go back and relisten to Moritat before December to see where it sits, but, for what it’s worth, I have high hopes for Der Rote Milan and I eagerly await their next record.

August 6, 2019

Arctic Sleep - Kindred Spirits

By Calen Henry. Arctic Sleep’s seventh full length, Kindred Spirits, is something uncommon for a metal album. It is comforting and inviting. The production is natural, the drums sound full, the guitars are tuned low and driven warm, and the vocals are a deeply melodic and harmonies abound.
By Calen Henry.

Artwork by Jennifer Weiler.

Arctic Sleep’s seventh full length, Kindred Spirits, is something uncommon for a metal album. It is comforting and inviting. The production is natural, the drums sound full, the guitars are tuned low and driven warm, the vocals are deeply melodic and harmonies abound. Even the fret-less bass glissandos sound warm and inviting. It is also an album about death catalyzed by the passing of sole permanent member Keith D’s cat Yoda. The lyrics go deep and complement the instrumental sound to make it into a pastoral rumination on death, life, moving on, and letting go as well as an elegy for Yoda.

Album opener "Meadows" sticks close to the melodic doom sound of 2014’s Passage of Gaia until the song’s last section, where it opens up the sonic palette with a cello drop then some truly soaring vocals. As Kindred Spirits progresses the it continues to open up and explore more genres. Melodic doom metal shares the spotlight with extended range chugging, fuzzed out Smashing Pumpkins style accents, middle eastern tinged tapping, a djembe accompanied acoustic instrumental track, post-punk-ish driving bass, and Jesu-ey walls of warm distortion before going full drone on album closer “Old Soul”. It is an unexpectedly perfect conclusion; the sound of birds accompanying washes of guitar before multi-tracked cat purring closes out the album in what I can only interpret as “kitty heaven”.

Despite all the genre changes the album has excellent flow and the 69 minute run-time flies by, likely due to Keith's singular vision; the songs and lyrics were written by him and he plays all instruments, save drums. He's joined by Nick Smalkowski on drums (that he made!), after being absent for Passage of Gaia and a couple of guest vocalists to complete the sound.

For such a slim cast of characters the result is astounding. The album is bursting with ideas and sounds, though all delivered at a relaxed doomy pace. Despite a fairly loud (DR 6) master, details of the different instruments come through and the whole record sounds great.

Despite my familiarity with the band I managed to completely miss the kickstarter for Kindred Spirits and was unaware of it until release day. Don't make my mistake. Get on this. It's fantastic.

August 2, 2019

Russian Circles - Blood Year

By Justin C. When I reviewed Russian Circles’s last album, Guidance, I noted that there seems to be a certain obsession with the band’s heaviness, with each new album cycle prompting folks to declare that the instrumental trio is at their “heaviest yet.”
By Justin C.


When I reviewed Russian Circles’s last album, Guidance, I noted that there seems to be a certain obsession with the band’s heaviness, with each new album cycle prompting folks to declare that the instrumental trio is at their “heaviest yet.” The fact that I see statements like this referring to every album makes me think a lot of people are missing the point. In fact, here’s my HOT TAKE: By most measures, I’d say the heaviness quotient* of any given Russian Circles album, including their newest, Blood Year, is pretty close to their baseline level of heaviness.

How closely Russian Circles adheres to metal adjacency might be a way to help clarify their genre, but in reality, the band’s a bit more subtle than that. The basic elements of their style are rock and metal based, and for sure, there are always some truly crunchy moments on their albums. On Blood Year, “Milano” ebbs and flows with some doomy/sludgy flavor, and album closer “Quartered” is pretty much fire from beginning to end. But that said, you need to listen a little more deeply to understand their magic.

I said that Guidance had some of their most delicate work, and going back further, Memorial saw the band pushing their limits even further, going so far as to include guest vocals from Chelsea Wolfe. Compared to those two albums, Blood Year is one of their leaner, more muscular albums. To my ear, they’re working more with their basic elements than on other recent records. It’s heavy in its own way, but it doesn’t lack the nuance that they always bring to their work. “Kohokia,” for example, plays with subtle shifts between light and dark, leaving you unsure as to whether you’re being uplifted or weighed down. And “Ghost on High” is another short gem that the band seems so good at--a fleeting interlude with an almost Baroque feel.

Is Blood Year a game changer for the band? Not really, but on the other hand, it doesn’t need to be. Thirteen years after their first album, Russian Circles remain as beguiling as ever, and they remain the standard bearer for how to do instrumental rock/metal.


*Most of our sophisticated readers of course know that the heaviness quotient is calculated thusly:
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