A fair bit of time has passed since I first caught a listen of this out the back of a car at Party San Festival. I also got sent a download link a while back and much more recently a promo CD but have waited until now to review due to the release date. Procella Vadens (which I believe roughly translates as ‘Wanderer In The Storm’) is an album with great depth about it and it is one that needed a long time to really get to grips with in order to review. I would not like to be a writer getting this one to cover with a very short deadline that’s for sure. Over the course of an hour you are transported as perhaps a wanderer through various musical landscapes by this band from deep within the Black Forest region of Germany. It is their third full length album and makes me want to hear the preceding two to see how they have developed, especially as I have heard very good things about their earlier work. Here though we have an album that illustrates great maturity as well as one that has seen a great deal of time and care put into its construction.
A gloomy piano passage mournfully starts things and I shall come back to this later as the track ‘Die Hoffnung Stirbt’ certainly seemed slightly familiar by feel. ‘Lacrimae Mundi’ opens the portal and we are thrust into a windswept quagmire of mid-paced, heathen black metal. Guitar tones are really sharp and sound suitably jagged in the mix, even lush at times, the instrumentation has a real epic flow about it and Horaz’s vocals are guttural and gargle away with a full-throated bite. Melody here is resplendent, there is a drop out to leave an acoustic strum lushly meandering away as the song literally dies and bleeds into the albums longest sermon, ‘A Million Moons.’ There is something very natural about the sound and vibe behind the music, it is melancholic, reflective and at times even pastoral, a paean to nature, the seasons, death and rebirth perhaps in my over active imagination. A lovely mesmerising passage acoustically sparkles in the midst of this blackened wilderness allowing the track breath before it rabidly hones back in at the listener. The evocative impassioned flair one gets from listening to the likes of Drudkh can be acknowledged here.
Swaggering black hymnals blossom into an enrapturing guitar passage as ‘À La Nuit Tombante’ turns the sky into a crimson canvas gradually fading to black. We are back to the piano sonata as we go into ‘Autumn Serenade’ which after much deliberation I realised reminds of Keith Emerson’s gorgeous main score from Dario Argento’s Inferno. Perhaps they should have picked Suspiria of the Three Mothers being set in Freiburg but that could have been too obvious. From here the track goes into a piece that is best described as within the shoegaze realm of black metal, completely drawing the listener into its depths.
Another track that really stands out for being unexpected and different is ‘The Descent Into Hades’ nowhere near as horrible as it sounds but with female vocals reminiscent of Lisa Gerard’s contribution to Hanz Zimmer’s excellent Gladiator soundtrack. So if you are looking for some diverse, enthralling black metal that is going to keep you captivated through the long cold months of 2010 this should do the job nicely. Special mention also has to go to the fantastic cover art guaranteed to send cold shards of ice through you the second you clap eyes on it.
http://www.myspace.com/imperiumdekadenz
