Neofolk is much more than Death in June and Boyd Rice, it is a living, breathing entity given life by countless bands subscribing to the unique, ancient European aesthetic.
Mauloch, a band from Germany, rise above their contemporaries with their debut album by effortlessly fusing everything notable and fantastic about neo-folk.
Each track is a swirly, lurching, haunting blend of repetitive drone samples, pounding wartime drums, Burzum-esque synth melodies, and wartime samples. Somehow, despite the huge amount of genre blending, each track feels appropriate. There is no awkward genre mashing here, it all feels like it comes from the same patriotic, feverish place.
A beautiful aspect of this album is just how full every song feels. They are not long, the longest being 5:20, but they all feel like tiny orchestral pieces. Um Walholl feels so dynamic even though it relies on a very repetitive synth section.
Experimentation really dominates this album. There is lots of harsh noise, but it is not noise for noise sake in the vain of Merzbow. The noise replicates concrete things, like bombs, police whistles, storms, and marshal drums. It is clever and it adds to the atmosphere of 20th century politics and radical ancient European worship that the album has.
The cream of the album is Sieg oder Tod, an exquisite aural journey into paganism and the paranoia of the totalitarian state. It brutally beats the concept of genre, drags it out back and shoots it right in the head. It is 5:07 of folk-based synth melody, chaotic, free form, yet still somehow-rhythmic pedal noise, speech samples, brutal marshal beats, and, surprisingly, a jazzy drum part. It conjures images of wartime Berlin, deep Norwegian forests, and men dying in vain. Absolutely sublime stuff.
This album, like everything I review here, is highly recommended. If you want a very dense, challenging piece of arcane music, this is for you. Stream it below.
No comments:
Post a Comment