Fleischwald

Punk / Hardcore / Crustcore, Doom Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Black Metal, Grindcore. All these styles have been used to describe Totenmond's music, but the only explanation for the Black Metal comparisons that I can see is the drum work on the opener "Öfter mal ins Blaue" (and the end of "Panzerdampf") on their following album "Reich in Rost". Other than that, there are no signs of Black Metal and especially Thrash Metal or Grindcore whatsoever anywhere.

What's left are the styles that are really a part of their sound: Hard-, or rather, Crustcore, Doom Metal, Death Metal (Obituary come to mind) and the two bands that really influenced them and that Totenmond are always compared to: Carnivore and Eisenvater. As a result, I think I have finally found the best possible description of their style with "Industrial Death/Doomcore" and this album is just as massive as this description may suggest!

After a pretty long intro and a crusty beginning, (the rest of) "Kadavernazion" and "Leichen der Liebe" show Totenmond's Industrial influences with their rather minimalist construction and the machine-like beats. "Tod und Niedergang" is a Death/Doomer that even Winter would have been proud of and the title track is basically a mixture of all that.

The emphasis on "Fleischwald" is a bit more on Hardcore/Crustcore, which is also displayed by rest of the album, i.e. "Dekadenz '98", "Treibjagd", the brilliant Narsaak cover "Der Misanthrop" and "Das Beil und der Vater" are pretty much pure Crust.

"Das saure Kraut" also starts like a Crust song and its construction is very similar to the aforementioned "Kadavernazion", yet this song doesn't have the Industrial vibes of the latter, because it ends very doomy and for the break they shamelessly used (with slight variations though) the break of their "hit" "Sagenwelt" from the "Lichtbringer" album!

If I had to chose the 3 best Doomcore (in its widest sense) albums of all time, it would be Crowbar's eponymous album, Type O Negative's "Slow, Deep And Hard" and Totenmond's "Fleischwald" or its follow-up "Reich in Rost", which is even a bit more extreme, but not nearly as well produced, as "Fleischwald" remains Totenmond's (by far) best produced album (I love the snare drum sound, by the way).

This is a strange thing though, because it is only their second release and you should suppose that the production quality increases from album to album. I discovered that "anomaly" when writing the Crowbar review, because they have exactly the same problem (their best produced album even was also the second one).

Finally I'd like to mention the cryptic lyrics that add greatly to the intensity of Totenmond's music. (Don't panic, if you don't understand them, because even if you spoke German, you would probably not understand them either...)

Totenmond combine a few of the most extreme forms of music to create a ruthless and bleak sound and "Fleischwald" is a perfect demonstration of that. Besides "Reich in Rost" this is not only their best (and best produced) album, but one of the best Doomcore releases of all time. Masterpiece!