Artist: Kältetod
Title: Reue
Type: Album
Label: Eternity Records

It’s time to crank up the old online translation machine to get a bit of an insight into what this group are all about as everything written is in German and there are scant details anyway, other than the fact this album contains “44 minutes of cold gruelling metal.” It would seem this is a project helmed by R and he is responsible for everything (thanks for that) and this is the second full length album following on from ‘Leere’ in 2005 as well as various demos, splits and no less than 2 best of compilations. Apparently the band’s name means hypothermia which goes very well with the chilly blue, cold album artwork and Reue means repentance; so there you have the basics before getting onto the actual music.

A nice and incredibly eerie keyboard intro sets the scene before it is joined by heavy fuzzing guitar sound and the first proper track ‘Vor entflammten Erinnerungen’ (Before Enflamed Memories) batters in on a welter of drum blasts. This is mid paced to fast heathen sounding blackness with a strong sense of melody and when the high feral rasps of the vocals join in shrieking over the top it instantly hits the mark. This sounds old and indeed apparently its composition goes right back to 2004. The recording is a bit on the muddy side and bottom end heavy, could do with a little more treble, tinny black metal this is not but some tones are lost. There is a maudlin flow with the guitars that are Xasthurian but on the whole the heavy percussive swagger takes me back a bit to old Abigor and the like.

Songs are long and well constructed and have a lot of dramatic impact flowing from hammering at you incessantly ala Judas Iscariot to toning it down into moods of vein slitting solitude. Songs seamlessly flow into each other without pause and you can approach this at times as one long piece of hostility. Things slow as we get to Vor entflammten Erinnerungen (Only The Icy Wind Still Carries) but the slower pace weathers away at you and oozes atmosphere through every frost clad pore. After this it really is like being caught in a massive storm as guitars scythe and drums boom at the mighty ‘Das Lächeln der Verwesung’ (Smile Of Decay). It’s pretty easy to forget this is the work of one man and if the recording was a bit sharper it would really be a completely storming album. That aside one works with what means they have available and the mysterious R has done a sterling job at producing a work of cold and harsh, primitive, yet effective underground black metal.

www.myspace.com/klttd