Ruines

Wintersieg, the man behind the now defunct one-man, one-album depressive black metal band Deinos Mastema, is also the man behind such thoughtful statements as “Suicide is an art, become an artist” or “When no hope is left, there’s still a bullet”. I don’t even know whether he really found those himself but, if he did, he probably spent more time writing them than this wonderful minimalist opus simply known as Ruines.

Wintersieg might master the art of suicide, but as far as I know he still has to prove it. However there’s another art he undoubtedly masters: the art of writing eight-minutes-long songs with material barely sufficient to write two minutes of music. To give you an idea of how he manages to do so, just read the following in-depth structural analysis of the second track, Pagan Pride – note than I’m not a single bit exaggerating. From 0:00 to 2:10: riff 1, repeated over and over again with neither drums, nor vocals. From 2:10 to 6:07: riff 2, repeated with minor variations, backed by drums and vocals. From 6:07 to 8:35: back to riff 1, again with no drums, and a few spoken words in the beginning. Yes, Sir, that’s ALL. Fifth track Der Morderische Wald follows pretty much the same pattern, with the exception of an additional third riff appearing in the third part. And if you’re asking for a far more evolved song like Par une sombre nuit d’hiver, this one will even boast nothing less than an occasional LEAD GUITAR. Amazing!

Also notice when I wrote “backed by drums and vocals” that was exactly what I meant – the production is so shallow it pushes the vocals down to a backing instrument, while the front of the scene is solely occupied by this over-primitive, over-repetitive guitar. The forest may look dark, misty, frightening, you don’t care anyway as you’re standing outside, trying to hear the apparently poor wounded poodle which is barking inside. Not to pretend said vocals, were they mixed up, would be of any interest. The common black metal mumblings – don’t speak while eating, child, that’s pretty impolite – and the occasional touch of pretentious, unarticulated clean vocals. Fortunately, those are even less audible than the harsh parts, meaning, inaudible unless you’re really searching for them. And coming to the spoken parts, they simply sound stupid.

Coming to the instruments... well, there’s little more to hear than the elementary guitar anyway. There’s undoubtedly a bass in the (instrumental) title track, otherwise, anywhere else this one is very hard to distinguish. The drums – that is, when there are drums – are either very badly played or, most probably, consist in a badly programmed drum machine, judging by the pretty dry sound. From the usual brain-dead blastbeats with the occasional cymbal hit to the couple of other classic patterns of bedroom level black metal, there really isn’t anything to wet your pants about there either.

Oh... Don’t worry, there are ambient tracks as well. What did you expect? It’s depressive black metal, so you have to begin with FOUR minutes of ambient intro, of course... Well no, you don’t, all the more than, as everything else on this release, it consists in the exact same melody repeated over and over again, this time on the keyboard. Keyboard which will come back for the sixth and above all seventh tracks, the true ambient tracks, you see. Believe it or not, it’s NOT the same melody than on the intro even if, at first glance, it seemed so; it’s also NOT the same melody than the closing Anathema cover even if again, it first seemed so. Also, don’t miss the vocals on Existence éphémère. Because even if you don’t believe it there are vocals, I tell you. And at 3:50, there’s even a guitar – I said a guitar, not a riff, don’t ask for too much.

When no hope is left, there’s still a bullet. Not only, Mr Wintersieg. When no hope is left to find anything worthwhile on your depressing release, there’s still a bin.

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