The Age of Cataclysm

There are modern day bands who acclaim to be the "new and modern" more melodic and technical black metal. Here we must insist in separating bands that fail and bands that succeed in actually sounding modern with a post-blackish tone in their music. Cryptic Wintermoon is one of those bands who succeeded. They hail from a place near Hof, which is in Bavaria, southern Germany. Most bands that come from this region have poorly selected boring themes induced into their music and weak lyrical concepts to match up with it. The problem with that, is that sounding original has become an almost impossible task within any kind of music genre.

After a few minor releases, Cryptic Wintermoon surprise us in the year 1999 with their first full-length album, entitled "The Age of Cataclysm", a proud and stable album with only very few little, negligible flaws. The album itself follows a rather strict pattern, combining very melodic elements such as synths and keyboards with a harsh, but digestible modern black metal sound, resembling "Gehenna" at moments. The guitar work that follows on this LP is decent, coexisting perfectly with the keyboards, which is rather seldom in this particular genre of metal, none overriding the other. The riffs are vehemently played, with a rather romantic passion. They may sound fairly simple, but very straightforward and catchy. Although this sometimes sounds like slowed down thrash, it certainly does not lack energy. The drum lines are also very well executed, including fast double bass rhythms as well as slow parts into the music, which tow the listener throughout the chaos. Nothing on this album sounds dull and there is also no lack of soli, that are rather present towards the end of the album. The moment the album begins, the instrumental intro "The cataclysm" kicks in, accompanied by a low voiced choire. It welcomes the listener into a dark world of destruction, war, gloomy figures, fallen angels and human paranoia. After the intro we get fast and speedy, but also melodic riffing on "The Abyssal Spectre" coped with decent lyrics and raspy vocals with a slight reverb in them.

"A cold sting of fear - blows like a spear right through your heart..."

And that's now the only thing awaiting listeners on the record. The followups "Born in Fire" and "Into Ashes" also have their own marks, the former sounding very epic and also welcoming one of the few clean vocal parts on the album and the latter being a little slower, but with a nice catchy chorus and penetrating verse. Although the concept and execution of the songs sometimes resembles "Hammerheart"-era Bathory, it doesn't hinder itself from creating its own epic atmosphere. Did I mention good lyrics? This album definitely has them. The only problem is that towards the end of the record, the songs tend to get repetitive, but having in mind that they aren't bad to begin with, this does not pose too much of a problem.

Recommended for fans of Bathory, Gehenna and Dissection.