Artist- Kaiserreich
Release-Ravencrowned
Format- Album
Label- Funeral Moonlight

Italian black metallers Kasserreich’s second full-length ‘Ravencrowned’ opens with a tense cinematic intro full of orchestral swoops and clanking percussion, sounding like something you might expect to find lurking on a latter-day Septic Flesh album and conjuring up images of some ancient war machine gearing up for battle. The listener is then dumped slightly incongruously into a maelstrom of raw and earthy riffs with a distinctly Finnish feel to them, and as the album continues it becomes harder and harder to accept that Horna/Behexen axeman Shatraug isn’t involved somewhere along the line. ‘Dreamfall (Pure, Tortured Heart)’ offers a sustained downpour of chaotic, surging riffs, the tempo ebbing and flowing as the palette shifts between warm-and-brooding and bitingly cold. Half-formed shoots of shrill and forlorn melody struggle their way to the surface on occasion, before the sporadic galloping gives way to a tender yet leaden passage of Alcest-like shoegaze that drags the song to its close.

‘Veleno’ meanwhile reminds greatly of Sargeist , its stirring, sorrowful riffs grinding against one another as the crude and dirty chaos of old Behexen rages in the background. ‘Lunes ov Judgement’ adds a just hint of early Drudkh’s brooding atmosphere to the mix, bringing in ominous, slow-building clean chord progressions that will be instantly familiar to fans of Forgotten Tomb, every last hint of warmth then suddenly stripped away as the song plunges into depressive passages of freezing, Mourning Dawn-like dread. ‘Cobra Legion Arose’ sustains the sudden drop in temperature, depositing the listener firmly in Transilvanian Hunger territory whilst retaining a hint of the disorientated, mad-with-grief feel of Sorrow Galaxies-era Mutiilation. This winding melodic style is even more pronounced on ‘Den Verkschythend’, but here just a hint of Primordial’s marching, epic style fills in the gaps.

‘Ravencrowned’ sounds Finnish first and foremost however, but whilst it’s certainly not lacking in primal atmosphere it doesn’t quite reach the high watermark attained by the pioneers of that scene. The production strikes a good balance between clarity and rawness, whilst the vocals are convincingly coarse yet unobtrusive. The songwriting is free-flowing and rousing, if sometimes a little long-winded, and at 58 minutes the album does rather outstay its welcome. That said, if Shatraug and co’s prodigious output still isn’t enough to satiate you, then this just might keep you going until that next inevitable Horna split.

http://www.myspace.com/kaiserreichofficialpage

Ross Taylor

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