Expedition Autarktis

Bergthron changed their style quite often on their way from "Verborgen in den tiefen der Wälder" (Debut) to "Leben und Lebenswille" (last release before Exp. Autarktis) which scared off some fans at times. Particularly "Leben und Lebenswille" had this effect because of the extensive acoustic part, which might be the reason why they decided to become harder again. The title was chosen because it is their first selfreleased record.

Many fans of the last album will cringe while listening to the first song "Asymmetrisch", because the body of sound is quite thick and full of pressure. The solely growled vocals indicate as well that the calmer sounds you might have expected are gone. Every worry that there are not any clean vocals is baseless, since the first appearance of those is in the follow up track.

The whole album is kept in hightempo and although there are breaking-ups through the clean vocals there is still a lot pressure. The orchestration itself is more virtuoso than ever before, the drums are more accentuated and the guitars are more challenged and busy than ever and so the original rhythmic riffs are reduced to a minimum.

The transitions between the tracks are kept fluently and that is really beneficial in terms of atmosphere. There are a lot of ambient sounds, like in the intro of "Seepest (Naglfar)", for instance water noises and gnashing ship sounds. But this is not the only thing that is new, the vocals are reverberating at times and there is a use of synthesizers in the last part of the song, which leads to its end.

One of my favorites is the outro "Autarktis (Bergthron)" with its spoken vocals, the beautiful drumlines, the powerful bass and of course the synthesizers which are creating are thick, catchy atmosphere.

Conclusion:

Fans of "Leben und Lebenswille" might have some trouble to accustom with the album, since the tracks are more compact and more aggressive than ever before. Although you need to hear the whole record a few times to really acclimate, it is really worth this effort. The greatest point of criticism is the playing time, which is really short with its 35:07 minutes. When we counterbalance the good things with the negative ones, like the playing time, some too compact, aggressive songwriting (what clearly depends on the point of view) and therefore the lack of finesse, we still have a very good rating. If you think you might like the album visit the myspacesite and listen to the two tracks that are there and, if you like them too, buy the record, so that the expedition will not end as a fail!
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Originally published by me on http://threnodies.com