Todessehnsucht

“Todessehnsucht” is quite different from the debut and not only in the sense that it’s the first instrumental Sieghetnar album. First I must say that the lack of vocals doesn’t bother me at all. As this and latter releases show, Sieghetnar’s music works well without vocals and the music alone is enough to capture the listener. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to put the vocal lines on this album if I were asked to.

Overall the songs are less varied than on the debut, the blastbeats have been dropped entirely and the tempo is predominately slow. The feeling is very withdrawn and sombre and it also feels like everything is hidden behind a thick layer of fog. The main reason for the foggy feeling is the production. It’s pretty muddy, especially the guitar sound is less trebly than it was on the debut. This creates a hazy wall-of-sound feel to the music. The slow pace and simplicity of the music plus the production may make “Todessehnsucht” seem boring and inaccessible to some but I like it.

The album starts with “Saat”, an ominous and creepy ambient track with an industrial touch to it that sounds like something by a band signed to Cold Meat Industry. It creates the feeling of being lost inside a labyrinth, catacomb or cave without light, just fumbling around trying to find the way out. The title track that follows is a slow flowing ambient black metal piece, quite monotonous but also pretty soft, like a caress. The synths hover above the guitar in a ghostly manner, giving me visions of vast wintry woods (this kind of music always seems to give those kinds of visions). This track ends with a long ambient part that lasts several minutes; just the synths creating dreamy landscapes, giving the listener a feeling of floating somewhere deep in space.

The synth melody during the first part of “…eere” sounds like an eerie yet seductive call from beyond. If you follow it you’ll most likely get lost and never find your way back. This perhaps the most hypnotic track of the album, a real getting-lost-in-the-landscape kind of thing. After six minutes the track suddenly speeds up. This gives me the feeling of a person starting to run after having walked slowly for a long time. Perhaps the person thinks he or she has found the way home after getting lost but is that really the truth? After the ten-minute mark the tempo slows down again, indicating that the person probably got lost again.

The final track “Staub” is a soft, foggy and somewhat distant keyboard ambient track. Since this album is called “Todessehnsucht” (longing for death) and Staub means “dust”, it could be that this track is a requiem to the physical existence, a final scene. The longing for death has been fulfilled and the body has turned to dust. All that is left is an ambient track commemorating the existence of a life that has ended.