Stille (Das nagende Schweigen)

What a splendid EP! Just chock full of melancholy, soft, semi-ambient riffs, and wonderful black metal. There is a bit of shoegaze element to this as well, but not light and fluffy, it adds to the overall darkness of this release. Fantastic slow to mid-paced songs abound here in this 30 minute EP, and is just long enough to satisfy the taste for this type of music in a single release.

There are many portions of this album, such as in the second track where there is nice clean guitar work, with interwoven distorted melodies, spoken lyrics, and black metal shrieks. This album exudes depression like an Evergreen in the winter. There are also dual vocals, high screams, and gutteral growls, done extremely well to add atmosphere. A nice and full sound here.

What really blows me away the most is the clean guitar plucking mixed with the underlying black metal tones. Excellent use of riff, and pace change keeps things moving nicely thoughout the entire CD. Not really a black metal release, but more a progressive post-black album with some shoegaze mixed in and a lot of mood swings.

Der Regen for me is probably my favorite song on the album, starting out with a soft riff, and breaking into a death metal riff, and growl. Once again there is the over and under vocal style, which I thoroughly enjoy, repeating itself back in the singular deep yells. There is even some programmed background ambience which reminds me of later Opeth releases featuring Per...Not over-the-top, just enough to fill in the gaps. Some nice thrash riffs halfway in, and the song comes around full circle.

You know, this band is vastly underrated, for reasons unknown to me, seeing as I find aspects of this band that pretty much every metalhead can appreciate at least at one point or another. I don't think anyone can fault these guys in their musical prowess. From late Ameoseurs and Alcest, to some nice death metal and everything in between...there is nothing that this album misses.

This is definitely something that one should look into if they are interested to hear a genre bridging band, and a meandering album that hits all facets of the metal world. This is not as straightforward symphonic/atmospheric black metal of the Nektar 1 and 2 albums, but definitely shows these guys want to put a fresh face on the genre every once in a while. Fabulous release, and not lacking at all!