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A Split Album in Disguise - 56%

PigfaceChristus, June 4th, 2010

With every Halgadom album I’ve listened to, I’ve struggled to get at just who Halgadom actually are. They’ve released “Heimstatt” and “Verdunkelung des Göttlichen,” two straight-up folk albums worthy of praise. They’ve also released two metal albums, “Wille : Tatkraft : Potential” and “Sturmwoge.” However, the two that mix the neofolk and metal styles—namely “Halgadom” and this one, “Sein und Werden”—are the most confusing. By mix, I don’t mean blend the two styles into each track, so that you’re left with, well, folk metal. No, “Sein und Werden” instead has two distinct personalities: the campfire bard and the Germanic barbarian. Therefore, I conclude that there are, in fact, two bands here, Halgadom I and Halgadom II, and boy is the relationship between the two unequal.

For the first five tracks, Halgadom I play a continuation of the folk style in “Verdunkelung des Göttlichen,” but also offer a foreshadowing of what would later be found on “Heimstatt.” The clean vocals are both male and female, each with the same sincere, non-flamboyant performance as on the previous album. Drums, violin, and bass guitar add to the mix and make the first half of “Sein und Werden” more dramatic than much of “Verdunkelung des Göttlichen,” but the music is still just as easygoing. The beat is slow, the production organic, and the overall mood mournful but transcendent. The longer track lengths allow Halgadom I to explore different elements of composition, such as acoustic guitar solos and more violin-work, but six minutes is quite long for folk, especially when each song is basically a homogeneous ballad. The whole feeling is very Empyrium-like, albeit much less theatrical or interesting.

Too bad if you were just getting swept up in the folk style because Halgadom II are here to hijack the album’s second half. Upon the sixth track, “Sein und Werden” suddenly makes the leap into metal with absolutely no transition. “Weg durch die Zeit” just fades out, drums plodding and violin swooning, until “Das Hügelgrab” kicks the listener in the ear drum with its not-quite-folk-metal, not-quite-black-metal, not-quite-thrash-metal lead-in.

The music is so watered-down that it escapes classification because every bit of it is so non-confrontational. Sure, the vocals are high-pitched, but they aren’t black metal. With the advantage of being at the front of the mix, they try really hard to sound aggressive but only come out as mildly ticked-off, as though they’re just being whispered angrily or are on the point of breaking. Not even the German language can make them sound convincing, but it’s not just the vocals that lack the necessary punch. Subordinated to the vocals, the drums and the guitars do not occupy a large space in the production. Beyond the well-composed solos and impressive lead-work, they just don’t sound “big” enough to be epic. They come close in the title track, probably because the vocalist does very little work here, but when the drums abandon their gallop for a faster, thrashy pace the intensity just is not there. This is even the case when the band attempts blastbeats, as in “Stahl.” The vocalist yaps over the passage, while the music becomes thinner once its speed increases.

If Halgadom II are going for anything, it’s a Bathory-esque sort of grandeur and aggression, but perhaps it’s just as cliche to say, “This sounds like Bathory,” as it is to actually compose music that sounds like Bathory. After Halgadom I, I am inclined to call this folk metal, but where exactly does Halgadom II keep the folk, besides in the lyrical content? A band certainly doesn’t need to use traditional folk instruments to be labeled folk metal. Windir, Kampfar, and Primordial generally don’t need them, but that’s because they incorporate folk-like melodies into their music. Halgadom II, on the other hand, barely do that. Whatever pagan aesthetic they’re making a claim to is just vague and overdone. Well, surely Halgadom II’s part doesn’t ruin Halgadom I for the listener, right?

As a matter of fact, it does. It doesn’t ruin Halgadom I’s music, but it does defeat any desire to listen to “Sein und Werden.” Why would one want to listen to this release for either folk or metal, when he could listen to a release that actually devotes the entirety of its runtime to one style? To be fair, the album is an impressive forty-seven minutes in length, and none of the tracks could be dismissed as filler. If you think of “Sein und Werden” as a split album or as two EP's joined together, then maybe that would justify a listen. But, still, one’s left with an inescapable question: why isn’t “Sein und Werden” the music of two separate projects? It’s fine for a band to evolve and for their discography to reflect their changing interests, but to combine two styles that so strongly clash under one release is just counter-intuitive.

Regardless of how the album is structured, the music isn’t that bad. Overall, it’s just unmoving. The first half of the album is solid neofolk, but it gets cut down too soon. Next to “Heimstatt” and “Verdunkelung des Göttlichen,” it seems unnecessary. Had the first half constituted its own release, then maybe it wouldn’t seem so trivial, as the swiftness with which Halgadom jump to metal makes one wonder just how important the first half was. Halgadom’s metal is not poorly composed; it’s just unconvincing. Had “Sein und Werden” been all metal, it would have been mediocre at best, but at least it would have made sense. But, for the moment, “Sein und Werden” just leaves the listener scratching his head.