Durch Ruinen und düstere Kriegsfelder

Beware, this is black metal in its crudest form. If you can't cope with dirty amateur productions that make your eardrums bleed, you'd better stay away from Durch Ruinen und düstere Kriegsfelder ("Through Ruins and Dusty Battlefields" in German). Same if you're embarrassed about bands who praise the German Third Reich.

Sombre Chemin and Ornaments of Sin were among the finest French raw black metal acts back in the 2000's. Both bands are not active anymore to my knowledge, but this split is still a very remarkable release in my opinion, gathering some of the bands' best material.

Sombre Chemin play a mixture of Black Legions-inspired dissonant riffs, pagan rock-ish riffs (à la Vlad Tepes) and weird ambient interludes. I can sum up Sombre Chemin's music like this: strong personality, dreamlike atmosphere, but sloppy technique and production. The songs featured on Durch Ruinen... are based on the concept of the Third Reich's fall. It's easy to note that Sombre Chemin's side is more blatantly political than Ornaments of Sin's. But let's begin with Sombre Chemin, since they open hostilities.

First of all, the drumming sucks. It's even sloppier than anything played by Capricornus. It doesn't completely ruin the listening experience, but it certainly adds to the band's identity a feeling of powerlessness that was probably never intended.

On the other hand, the guitar riffs are really inspired and memorable. No annoying song structure to be found here. The guitar riffing progresses through the song to tell a story. That's what great about this band: listening to them is like listening to a sad story, with some enlightened parts.

Sombre Chemin also play ambient-like parts, mixing synth layers, weird noises and sampled German military hymns. The addition results in a quite great fantomatic and nostalgic atmosphere. There is no real contrast between the black metal parts and the ambient parts, because they both participate in the same dark dreamlike ambiance. I particularly like the outroduction to "Possession Odinique" - ending the band's performance - with the obsessive repetition of the word "Europa". A successful try at practising electronic music.

Both sides of the split provide good vocals, though different from each other. Sombre Chemin's singer basically screams his guts out in a hateful way, and occasionally adds spoken words (quite pointless to be frank). Ornaments of Sin's vocalist has a more controlled flow and volume. His tight rhythmic feeling makes his vocal work enjoyable, though he indulges in useless spoken words too.

Both bands have an interesting introduction. Sombre Chemin samples Carl Orff's Carmina Burana O Fortuna. Ornaments of Sin uses the traditional thrashy feedback intro. The greatest song to be found on this split is Ornament's of Sin's "Citadels of Darkness". The drumming is fiercely fast, relentless and - unlike Sombre Chemin - professionally recorded and executed. The song's main riff is so great that I can hardly get it out of my head.

But the first time that I listened to Ornaments of Sin's performance with earphones, a problem immediately rang the alarm bell to my ears: the bass guitar is out of tune - about a semitone too low. Fortunately, the bass is hardly audible on most of the songs, but this problem can be irritating if you listen carefully.

The other songs are a bit lower in terms in quality. They feature other good riffs, but also common riffs already heard 100 times as well. Ornaments of Sin lacks in personality what Sombre Chemin lacks in tightness and professionalism. That's probably why each side of the split balances each other. The only problem that both bands share in terms of production is the high, eardrum-piercing, shrill, excessively distorted guitar tone.

Before finishing this review, a few words about the cover art. I don't own the CD or vinyl version, but the front cover looks pretty amateur: Photoshop copy-paste, common Gothic font, black and white... We've already seen this 1000 times before. But I own the cassette version, and the cover art is even simpler, only showing the castle on a full black background and including the bandnames and tracklisting. So don't expect more than music if you plan to buy Durch Ruinen und düstere Kriegsfelder. I may add that if you want to buy the cassette version, you may need to fill the gaps, since the whole release approximates more than 33 minutes. (As a personal note, my wicked stereo accidentally recorded a blank on "Dark Doctrines and Fullmoon Mysteries" instead of fast-forwarding the tape...)

I'm not used to giving marks in my reviews, but I think that the 80-85% range is fully deserved, even if Durch Ruinen... bears many flaws. I'd rather listen to this split than to some more recent and professionally-produced French acts from the NS/pagan scene.