Promo

I do not like music sung in German; in my mother tongue. Hard to say why, but it could have to do with the fact that it is possible to understand the lyrics and therefore also the concept behind a release. As a lot of black metal bands tend to use English for expressing the textual basis of their albums but utter this in such a way as to make it often impossible to understand anything of what is going on, matters lie different; especially due to the reluctance of black metal bands to print their lyrics. Basically, it is often impossible to get the idea by merely listening to the music; actually, I wonder whether a band would dare to sing about having sexual intercourse with a sun flower or celebrating a birthday with one's precious gerbil or even about the problems of getting the corpse paint right while being in puberty. As long as no one understands the content of the vocalist's screams, so what!

Back to the topic, Vartras are from Germany, they sing in German -- should be obvious from the lame introduction -- and they play black metal. The music is not bad, but when I have to listen to:
[Ger]Weltzerstörer, Weltzerstörer, Weltzerstörer, (...repeated even more...) feuert sein' Laser
[Eng](The) Destroyer of Worlds ... fires his laser (gun, weapon, dick, whatever)
then I want to run to the closest wall and bash my head against it. This is not what I would describe as tolerable or smart lyrics. This is the sort which makes me cringe, scream, skip the song etc. pp. and also avoid a band; presumably for good; one of the reasons I cannot stand these fluffy power metal bands. As mentioned before is black metal the genre in which this lyrical abomination takes place, so (luckily?) a good deal of the lyrics cannot be understood.

Yes, the music ... well, there is nothing new happening here, nothing another band did not already attempted -- and often in a better way. There is the old-school banner hanging over this release in some respect and the sound has some amount of rawness. Mr. drum-computer does his best to suck a little bit: the snare is too loud, the bass too powerless and the cymbals hidden behind the all the other things that are going on. The vocals are some form of croaking, which works fine with the music but some additional variation in tempo and the like would be neat.

Well, simple structured and 'I do not give a fuck' black metal can be found on this release. Foreigners might have an easier time with this than I, but I can also enjoy the music, once the chorus part of the song has passed. Nothing spectacular here, but some solid stuff and a good start.