Weltenende

Look at the album cover for 'Weltenende'. What do you see? It's a snow-covered mountain peak, backed by pale, tranquil clouds. The mountain peak looks craggy and lumpy, perhaps with a cave in its folded recesses, probably completely uninhabited and unreachable. That description may sound somewhat familiar to black metal fans: since the commencement of the Norwegian scene in the early 90s, bands have included visions of their icy homelands and representations of isolation in their artwork and lyrical imagery. The problem with this album cover is that it looks merely standard. It isn't a striking image of a frozen forest (like on Darkthrone's 'Panzerfaust' or 'Ravishing Grimness'), it doesn't have a fairytale nostalgia (like on Burzum's 'Hvis Lyset Tar Oss' or Ulver's 'Bergtatt'), it isn't even a beautifully stark landscape (Wolves in the Throne Room's 'Diadem of 12 Stars'), just a hill with some snow. It doesn't go far enough for black metal, doesn't try to wedge itself into your mind, and nor does the music.

The band's intention is fairly clear: take the cavernous, transcendental riffing that was initially popularized by Burzum and Enslaved and marry its overwhelming ambiance with mellow acoustic sections that might suggest reflective pauses on an affirming journey. Ulver's 'Bergtatt' would seem to be a likely musical and thematic predecessor for this style, except with a notably diminished experimental edge that made that album such an interesting diversion. The lyrics are sung in the band's non-native German (Ulver were playing with Old Danish at the time) and those folk sections are airy and wandering, rather than deliberately evoking the past, like Satyricon's early work did. I also wouldn't be surprised if these Canadians had been listening to some of their North American peers like Wolves in the Throne Room et al before they recorded 'Weltenende', since an album like 'Diadem of 12 Stars' has the same kind of elevating feeling to its riffs despite a generally bleak sound.

What remains suspect, however, is exactly how little A Winter Lost have managed to do with these influences, since the majority of this album is driven by the same basic idea repeated in most of the songs in a very similar style. Other than the more straightforward opener and the slight deviation of 'Lied', all of the songs rely on the transfer between rolling tremolo riffs and gentle acoustic passages to create some sort of atmosphere, which does materialize, though never strongly, and certainly never convincingly. The black metal riffs are always washes of sound more than attacks of pace or jagged edges, so the important thing must be the quality of the riffs, their hypnotic nature, and the atmosphere they create. The problem is that those riffs sound weak from the very beginning and, stripped of power, can do nothing to capture the listener or stir the chemicals in their brain, at least one of which is essential for music. They do have a kind of atmosphere, but it's just like the cover image - plain and generic, where nothing much happens.

Since the riffs are wide of the mark, there should be something to grab the attention from somewhere else, such as the drums or vocals. The drums have the same kind of fault as the guitars, except we can blame the mix a little more here. They are incredibly soft and woolly, hiding miles behind everything else, so that no aggression, no subtlety, no anything makes it to the listener. For a black metal album, there are shockingly almost no blastbeats or fast drumming at all, with beats that are more reminiscent of downer rock and include a few interesting fills that no one will notice, because they don't come out of the sound at all. This makes for very gentle sounding black metal, edging close to some of Alcest's shoegazing material at times, yet the vocals are too abrupt and conventional, pretending to be a rasping demon from the abyss when they could sometimes have been delicate and floating to suit the style, which would at least provide some variety. K Dylla, the vocalist, has a pleasant voice when she sings the folky parts, so why didn't the band just combine the two elements to make things more interesting? For a half hour album to feel long due to lack of ideas is a crying shame.

Of the six songs here, I've mentioned 'Der Schrei' and 'Lied' as being slightly different. The former lacks any of the acoustic breaks and just about keeps itself afloat, though again there is nothing distinctive to hold onto after it finishes, just more washes of riffs and harsh vocals coming endlessly for five and a half minutes. 'Lied' is the only song that really tries to do something fresh and, even then, the band can only maintain it for under three minutes. The guitar tone changes from the mist-soaked tremolo to an altogether broader and more dangerous tone and the movements are more precise and authoritative, as if the drugged giant is stirring in his sleep and threatening to wake up. It isn't much better, but has a touch of that imperial quality that Satyricon have sometimes managed to conjure on their later works like 'The Age of Nero', where directness met with a rounded, earth-shaking guitar sound. A Winter Lost never manage to rise to that level, but even noticing that tiny moment of promise is a sign that the rest of the album utterly fails to do anything new.

'Weltenende' isn't quite bad enough to be ridiculed, it just happens to be boring and pretty worthless as a black metal album. As ambient music, on the other hand, it doesn't fare quite so badly, with a suggested use for reading, working, or maybe even sleeping if you remove 'Lied' from the tracklist. There's no need to explore this particular mountain any longer.