Gedachte & geheugen

Lugubrum have always let their quirky sense of humor come through in their work, and “Gedachte & Geheugen” is no exception. But maybe the joke’s gone too far, to the point where the band is laughing at you for actually listening to this album. Well, at least it doesn’t have the sound of someone shitting or burping because that’d be idiotic, right? Lugubrum would never do something like that, of course. To be blunt, “Gedachte & Geheugen” is barely an album. It is an hour-long endurance trial that tests the listener’s tolerance for colorless MIDI music and fuzz-ridden black metal. That’s right, it’s another one of those albums split down the middle, excluding the intro track, into two styles. So the black metal songs are supposed to be the “Gedachte” part, and the synthesizer filler tracks are “Geheugen?” I guess they’re as complimentary as shit and piss.

Only around twenty-one minutes of black metal comprise the hour, and it just reeks with that same deliberate under-production that you hear in bedroom projects. It must be deliberate because the quality of “Winterstones,” released two years before “Gedachte & Geheugen,” is much better than this. Now, the production isn’t too terrible by black metal standards, but the messy, fuzzy, and downright cacophonous quality of it makes the music impotent. This debilitates the drums the most, which blast along somewhere in the background without any sense of force behind them. Likewise, the vocalist sounds as though he is screaming through a glass bottle that is strapped to his mouth like a muzzle. The vocals are distant, cavernous, and abrasive in their gargle-y indiscernability. What’s strange is that the production isn’t even consistent across the six listenable tracks. “Stahlheim II” and “Als de Goden Zwijgen” are tepid messes of wishy-washy static, while in the others the fuzz is a little clearer—sort of like Ulver’s “Nattens Madrigal” but without the punch or melody.

Composition-wise, the black metal tracks aren’t of terrible quality. Beneath the static, there’s a slight kernel of originality and, always a plus, the bass is actually audible. However, when Lugubrum do get off the blastbeat wagon, the music gets even messier. That’s why “Dampen Uit Een Ondiep Graf” is, in some respects, the standout track and, in others, the worst. Because of the sort of production the band is working with, the music doesn’t support very clean transitions when it takes on martial-style drumming or a non-tremolo guitar pattern. Even if the black metal tracks were the best thing since “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas,” they still wouldn’t be able to make up for what follows in the album.

The next thirty-seven minutes or so are nothing but throwaway synthesizer tracks that sound as unnecessary as Burzum’s keyboard releases and as cheap as the typical ambient filler tracks you find on nearly every black metal album. I don’t know what it is about keyboards, synthesizers, and electronic boops and beeps that send a dense listener crying atmosphere. There’s nothing glorious about cheaply-rendered ambient tracks. There’s nothing epic about them. It doesn’t take me back to the good old days when people used to wipe their asses with leaves and sacrifice their left testicles to the sun. With faux-trumpets that sound like farts and faux-harpsichords that sound like the buzzing of flies, these tracks do absolutely nothing except make me wish I were listening to an 8-bit Nintendo soundtrack instead of this.

Considering how only a third of the album is worthy of a listen, a 28% rating is actually not that bad. Lugubrum made three crucial mistakes in creating “Gedachte & Geheugen.” First, they split the album down the middle into a black metal side and an ambient side. With an hour’s worth of music, yes, it might be a good idea to have some sort of chapter-like structure to the album, but to split it down the middle into two clashing styles, with only silence for a transition, is not very wise. Second, they deliberately skipped out on the album’s production quality, probably to mock the black metal trend. Sure, that’s a little funny, but if your music suffers for it then you shouldn’t do it. Third, they padded out the album with an overwhelming amount of ambient filler. Even if you do like Lugubrum’s black metal, tracks two through seven become irrelevant next to the thirty-seven minutes that follow. In the end, “Gedachte & Geheugen” fails at supplying good music, and it fails at being an album, but at least Lugubrum make up for it on their other releases.