Ferne

Germany's Melkor is the solo project of Patrick Baumann, formerly of avant-garde black metallers Nocte Obducta and post-rock/black metal outfit Agrypnie. Enlisting the help of Nocte Obducta/Agathodaimon drummer Mathias Rodig, Baumann uses this album's eleven tracks and hour-long running time to present musical ideas that weren't appropriate for his then full-time gigs. As is sometimes the unfortunate case, Ferne's biggest problem is its lack of focus and unified feeling.

The songs are a bit all over the place, ranging in style from Norse-influenced Germanic black metal not too far removed from stuff like Nagelfar to a more epic, folky style with some similarity to Negura Bunget or maybe Hades. Sticking with that first style for the first three tracks on the album, we get a lot of faster-paced tremolo riffing backed by blasting or double bass. There's some thrash influence in the riffing, though it's minor enough and never moves the character of the music away from its blackened core. The tremolo lines in these songs is pretty chaotic, bringing to mind early Enslaved or Emperor minus the symphonics.

Then, the title track begins. Starting in a style that bears close similarity to the first three songs, it soon switches over to a midpaced variety of black metal with a much-renewed focus on melody, especially in the lead guitar. Baumann's vocals, which are a low, breathy rasp in all of this material, bringing to mind John Haughm from Agalloch, mesh with this more direct, romantic style much better than they do with the more aggressive style exhibited in other songs. This sort of material seems so much more organic and natural to Baumann's writing tendencies, too, with simpler riffs but ones that are an order of time more memorable and powerful than in his more aggressive material. As it goes through its movements, “Ferne” begins to feel more and more well-worn in, like it's the musical home Baumann's been looking for this whole time. It's a great song, and the album would be much better off if more of it was done in this same style.

Unfortunately, it ain't. “Lichtung”, parts of “Morgentau”, “Grabmal” and “Wachtraum” are all done in the more aggressive, disjointed style. It's not that Patrick Baumann is bad at writing this kind of material, per se, but it does feel decidedly less passionate, with few riffs ever really commanding your attention. The cleanliness of the production and the tendency for individual riffs or song sections to be short-lived means that there's no time for a properly oppressive atmosphere to build up in the style of, say, The Ruins of Beverast. No, this stuff is too friendly for all that. It never sounds bad, it's just hard to get excited about riffs this lifeless and songs that feel like they're going through the motions more than anything. The most successful of these is “Grabmal”, which does have a somewhat memorable main theme and is a bit slower on average, but still doesn't feel as developed as the style introduced with the title track.

There is some respite, though. Parts of “Morgentau”, the glorious “Narben” and the second half of “The Sun Denies All Sleep” return to a more melody-focused, anthemic style that feels so much more complete than the other material. Even the folk interlude track “Keine Karte Kennt Den Weg” feels more heartfelt than Baumann's more aggressive tracks. “Narben” is the best song on the album, with just a couple of chords making up its main riff. It's the sort of riff that could go on forever without outstaying its welcome, though, with Baumann's warm rasping tones bringing it all together. Even the guitar tone feels like it was made for this stuff, the distortion putting the perfect edge on these mournful melodies.

This project has been pretty quiet for some time now, but I honestly thing Baumann was onto something with some of the material here. He's got a clear knack for melody, so it's sort of a mystery to me why he couldn't apply that talent to the band's faster stuff a la Nagelfar. If he somehow managed to do that, he might be able to release an album that's really compelling from start to finish. The easier and more likely answer, though, would be for him to just focus on the style that, to me, he obviously feels more comfortable writing and playing. I'd listen a full album of songs like “Ferne” and “Narben” on a regular basis. As it stands, this is a well-produced, well-performed slab of German black metal that has some serious disparity in both style and quality of music, worthwhile for its stronger moments.