Av vinterkald

The winter is coming closer and closer, yet I’m already suffering from severe frostbite in by room. In 1997, Branikald released their sixth full-length demo/album: ‘Av Vinterkald’. The Swedish label ‘Total Holocaust records’ was so nice to release a CD version in 2005 with the different album title ‘Winterkald’. Branikald did a great job convert the extreme cold of the Russian winter into black metal.

Blazebirth hall bands have always played black metal in the rawes, most harsh and primitive form that exists. Branikald is no exception and ‘Winterkald’ is yet another raw piece of art in their rather big discography. ‘Night and Fog’ is the intro and it is a good atmospheric start of the album. The four minute lasting acoustic guitar song creates the feeling of wandering alone in a vast, snowy dark forest. Four minutes have passed and from this moment on the temperature drops. Raw, intense riffing and rattling drums create coldness and an atmosphere that is as haunting as it is hypnotizing. The hypnotizing effect of especially this song (and the rest of the album) is mainly the cause of the monotonous character of this music. Understand that Branikald isn’t black metal for everyone; this is the purest and most harsh form. ‘To a Frigid Luminary of the Night’ is one of the best songs that the band ever produced and it’s too bad that this doesn’t resemble the entire album. The production of this album is just plain bad, though Branikald has worse ‘produced’ albums. For general black metal fans this would not be acceptable and the biggest part of the black metal audience would be appalled by this rawness.

The continuing strength of this album (and actually almost all albums created by this band and the Blazebirth Hall circle) is this monotonous character. Most songs consist of about three riffs and last for about six to nine minutes. ‘Burning all the Bridges Behind Myself’ is no exception and starts of in the same way all most of the tracks do: a fast-paced riff, followed by a blast beat that rests the entire song. Blast beat may not me a proper description of the drumming. The drums on this album should be viewed as rhythmic pulsations, vague guidelines to the guitar and they almost can’t be described as a blast beat. Kaldrad his screams are hateful and they fit the music very well, though they could have been a bit less loud in the mix. The fifth song on the album is nothing more then a continuing source of the previous songs. ‘Evilwinged Songs of the Tragic Centuries’ shows of a more depressive nature and has more or less typical Branikald styled ‘melodies’. ‘Reich of the Winter Frost’ has a more ‘melodic’ approach (as far as you can connect the word melody to Branikald) but therefore isn’t that different from the previous songs. The album consist of six songs and one thing that is a bit strange is that the sixth song, ‘The Depths of Pulsations’ has a different sound/production. Actually, this song is the exact same as the second track on their 1998 full-length/demo: ‘The Mead of Misanthropy’, though there is no change in style.

The cover art of Blazebirth Hall bands have always been very good. These cover artworks are mostly of a simple nature and resemble the music in a very realistic way: dark and cold. The cover artwork of ‘Winterkald’ illustrates a painting of what seems to be furious waves among vague islands/mountains and again this cover is made by excellence. The lyrics are originally written in Russian. The few translations that are present in the booklet are very poetic; abstract.

There are but few words to describe the music that Branikald creates but, the already excessively used word, cold is one of the few to letting you know how this feels. The songs fluently flow into the other and due the hypnotizing nature of the album and you hardly notice changes during the album. The key to these kinds of albums is atmosphere and it is that very atmosphere that makes this album worth listening. Branikald has this key and has made quite advantage of it during the years. As stated before, this is one of the better recordings done by this Russian horde, but not the greatest.