Totaler Winter und Krieg

Most underground black metal bands fall into one of two categories. Some are diamonds in the rough, absolute gems whose value will never be appreciated in the mainstream due to an (often self-imposed) exile to deep obscurity. Others are bland paint-by-numbers black metal whose music is marred unforgivably by blatant rip-offs of other, better bands.

Finsterwald is that strange in-between: a band with great potential who vacillates between real glory and tasteless drudgery. Totaler Winter und Krieg does a fantastic job of demonstrating both.

The first five minutes set the listener up with very low expectations. A tuneless and incredibly distorted keyboard intro sets the pace, then quickly gives way to a bizarre field recording involving a rushing river, chirping birds and a screaming baby. While the river and the birds do fit the song's title "Marsch Durch den Finsterwald", or "March Through the Dark Forest", I can't quite grasp what relevance a crying baby has to the subject.

This becomes something of a trend on the demo; lots of additional bells and whistles are added that don't add much to the songs, and often damage the atmosphere. Some effects, like cannon shots in a song ostensibly about war, make some sense despite their decidedly un-musical placement. Others, such as minute-long sample of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyrie" manage to do very little but kill the vibe of an otherwise very traditional black metal release.

The first three songs also suffer from a heavy reliance on repeated motifs, to the point that some songs only appear to include a single riff for their three minute runtime. The drum work only occasionally departs from high-speed blast beats, and almost every drum fill is the same boring run down the toms.

All this is to say nothing of the sound - it is among the worst-recorded tapes I have ever heard. Every track seems to have the gain cranked as high as it could go, turning everything into a wall of noise - some of the riffs are barely discernible above the clamor of cymbals and snare. The vocals are pushed far back in the mix and rely far too heavily on the low-quality microphone for distortion, leading to a great deal of clipping and a complete lack of intelligibility.

Yet despite all this negativity, it would be unfair to dismiss this demo as worthless. The last two tracks on the demo are solid enough to elevate it from a 10 or 20% up to the 60% that I've chosen to rate it.

After the third track, there is a brief moment of silence followed by yet another sound effect intro. Amid sounds of howling winds and the mournful cry of wolves, a sharp crack rings out and the wind is drowned out by the whinny of horses and the stomping of hooves on cold ground. This sets the stage flawlessly for the title track.

Featuring riffs that evoke the darkness and isolation of a German forest in the dead of winter and the most crushing drum sound on the tape, "Totaler Winter und Krieg" is everything that the preceding tracks aspired to be. An aptly-placed half time section keeps the song from falling prey to the same monotonous wash of blast beats that plagued the earlier tracks, and because of this the song's return to its original breakneck pace is all the more satisfying.

This is followed by another short keyboard piece - but where the intro sounded like an '80s videogame reject, the outro is the sound of an epic and dramatic battle playing out on fields of blood-soaked snow. A tasteful drum machine adds a martial element to the already forward-moving music and sits comfortably low in the mix, in stark contrast to the onslaught of drums heard throughout the rest of the tape.

Though the outro does end very abruptly - almost as though the tape ran out - it ensures that the demo ends worlds better than it began. In a way, it's almost nice to listen to a demo that gets progressively better with each track; the strength of the last two songs feels almost earned from the banality of the earlier songs and sheer ugliness of the intro.

Although Totaler Winter und Krieg will surely never be a favorite demo of mine, it will surely be a release that I come back to time and again. For all its weaknesses and all its faults, it succeeds in crafting a distinct atmosphere and has some memorable moments to boot. And while Finsterwald surely won't be remembered as one of the underground's strongest acts, it's clear that they can hold their own against a great many bands in their niche.