Freiheit

I've liked to listen to selected Dornenreich songs in the past since I discovered them on the outstanding neofolk compilation "Whom the Moon a Nightsong Sings" including bands such as Empyrium, Les Discrets and Ulver. As "Freiheit" is supposed to be the last album before a longer break from the Austrian neofolk trio and as I thought the song titles sounded epic, philosophical and poetic, I decided to give an entire Dornenreich record a fair chance.

As it turns out, I'm rather disappointed with the outcome of this release. All eight songs basically sound the same. Inoffensive acoustic guitars meet melancholic violin melodies and whispered vocals over some nature Sound samples. This kind of laid back atmosphere might work for one or two tracks but not for eight songs with a running time of more than forty-seven minutes. Most of the tracks sound too alike, pretentious and unspectacular to leave any deeper Impression and there are definitely no significant flamenco rhythms or world music elements as the press text claims. The lyrics desperately try to be intellectual and that's exactly why they aren't and turn out to be pretentious, predictable and passive.

Only two songs manage to stand out a tiny little bit. "Im ersten aller Spiele" has an unusual song structure and is quite hard to digest as an opener. Even though this unpredictable attempt at progressive song writing goes nowhere, it breaks with the more relaxed writing by numbers of the other songs. The other remarkable song happens to be "Das Licht vertraut der Nacht" because it's the only song on here which includes electric bass and guitars as well as harsher vocals that go back to the band's atmospheric black metal roots. Sadly, this emotional outburst is rather short and not impressively played either. If the band had used the contrast of truly diversified world music elements and passionate extreme metal passages more, this album would have been much more interesting.

As it turns out to be, "Freiheit" sounds tame, repetitive and dull and repeats the same calm melodies, lyrical topics and down-stripped song writing ideas over and over again. This is not at all what I associate with an epic term like freedom but rather with intellectual boredom. In my opinion, neofolk is more than acoustic guitars and violins plus poetic German lyrics over some samples of nature sounds but that's the only Thing Dornenreich offers on this hollow release. I would rather describe this effort as an acoustic songwriter output that might please to some lonesome self-consumed poets but not to truly open-minded fans of passionate world music or atmospheric extreme metal.

Dornenreich has always struck me as an act which puts such a tremendous amount of effort into its songwriting that I feel a few pangs of guilt that they've never left more of an impression with me. Despite immersing myself into a number of their past works, including 2011's Flammentriebe (one of their best), I simply don't find much of an allure to reach back once the initial listening period has passed. That said, I do not in general maintain an obsessive desire for such polished, folksy pastures upon which these Austrians graze. My preference was always for the dingier, more obscure sojourns of a Falkenbach or the Middle Earth majesties of the legendary Summoning, both of whom fill a comparable niche, while sounding very little like this band. At the end of the day, though, there is a massive audience for what Dornenreich commit to their albums, and Freiheit should continue to make new fans out of listeners within and without the folk metal genre, a nearly perfect 'period piece' band whose adherence to glinting traditional instrumentation should make the the toast of many faires and the emerging cultural awareness of younger European generations who were seemingly lost for decades.

This is more of a folk album than a metal album, to be sure, but not the sort of navel-gazing predictable stuff you'll find at a local coffeehouse open mic. They keep their writing engaging, narrative, weaving varied emotions through the rugged/smooth paradigm shifts of vocalist Eviga (Jochen Stock), who often seems just as much on the attack as he would during a more metallic shift in the band. Speaking of which, those only start to erupt around the mid point of the album's eight tracks, and usually just involve heavy chords to back up the violins and acoustic guitars, but Freiheit is so confident and invested in this neofolk side that you can honestly listen through without any expectations of metal content and not feel as if you're missing out. Bass lines are timid, drums as crystal and impacting as the more eloquent strings, and the production of this just sounds absolutely incredible at almost any volume. So accessible and involved are these guys that you have to wonder why they aren't booked for every Medieval/folk festival on the Eurasian continent, because they surpass most strictly folk/classical string-based ensembles I've experienced on record. But on the other hand, there is enough here for a rock fan to enjoy, what with the uptempo maneuvers and dreamy, ebullient melodies woven over the rambling rustic structures.

The only points at which the disc veers away from the accessible are the more tortured, gut-fed black metal vocals which arrive in a cut like "Das Licht vertraut der Nacht", which might turn off a few old timers but really just contribute to Eviga's overall charisma through these tales. Lighter than air, but eternally tormented, it clearly reminds you of Dornenreich's more aggressive roots without selling short the atmosphere and mainstream viability cultivated elsewhere through the instrumentation. The Austrian German lyrics might throw up a language barrier for those beyond the band's borders, but I think ultimately that anyone seeking out such a folksy purity on a recording wouldn't find this much of a hindrance. Their practice of packaging the music with a very common naturalistic image continues here, and yet strangely doesn't grow old since it jives with the authenticity and tradition implicit in the musical aims. I do feel that I got more out of the last album Flammentriebe than I did here, but this is certainly another of those records which has me pining for a past on the European mainland that I am far too removed to have ever experienced. With the appropriate lager and company, this is a pretty substantial trip into time, as Dornenreich persist in their evolution from some folk metal guys into a cultural artifact.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com