Yes you are reading this correctly, Krieg are now on Candlelight Records. I suppose it is not that surprising really but they have gone up a league from the likes of No Colours Records and Candlelight do have Nachtmystium and this new album is produced by Sanford Parker. Krieg are not going to sell out and get acceptable though, this is never likely to happen. However they have been edging towards a sound that is perhaps more sonically constructed than their old harsh and abrasive style found on albums like the exceptionally dissonant ‘Destruction Ritual’ from 2002. In fact ‘The Black House’ and ‘Blue Misama’ showed the ever changeable line-up morphing into more errant psychedelically windswept realms than before and this spills over into the new album.
It has been four years in the making and this does not surprise me having read about (and in the past spoken with) main-man Imperial’s battle with bi-polar disorder. I can also completely see where he is coming from with album ‘The Isolationist’ as people are very much a symptom of creating mental health problems and the best solution is shutting yourself off from them and locking the door. No actually thinking again, the best solution is making harsh uncompromising noise that if exposed to, they would run off screaming themselves, now if only they could be forced to listen to it!
Eerie samples set around bleak mournful sound and what sounds like an English professor telling something to let go of the light and that it doesn’t belong here set up ‘No Future’ Imperial renders a massive bellow and the instrumentation plummets in unleashing hell itself. The players this time around are Wrest on bass who should need no introduction, Joeseph Van Fossen of Noctuary on guitars and Chris Grigg from Algol and Woe amongst other on drums. The tumult here is spiteful and fearsome. Even when dropping into a slow morass it still breathes contemptuous hate out of every wretched pore. This is not the sound for the crowd make no mistake. ‘Photographs From An Asylum’ sets mood by title alone and the ominous clanking and low groans coming out the ether unsettle in the extreme. A nasty deluge of drumming bruises in and negativity and thoughts of playing with knives if only you could get one and out of the straightjacket are foremost in the psyche of this horrible despairing clamour. An almost black n’ roll groove slightly lightens the mood as ‘All Paths Lead To God’ swaggers in and rollocks away in perhaps a more structured song orientated fashion. It gets its hooks in as it eviscerates with a surprising melody before it literally swarms in and overpowers cataclysmically. The song is not done and goes through many twists and turns with ambient guitar building into a mournfully haunting passage with venomous vocals over the top, this really does have it all!
It really is an ever changing album, dropping different moods and textures in to passages of intense, feral musicianship. The dub-laden backward masked part of ‘Depakote’ catches you completely off guard but somehow once you are used to it makes perfect sense. ‘Religion III’ on the other hand is pretty much just a mesmerising passage of tribal drumming. The cold strumming melody of ‘And The Stars Fell On’ takes you on an astral projection. This is a mid-paced number and it has that aforementioned psychedelic intensity running through the weaving guitar lines. Having the track morph into harsh white noise by the end is pretty much a work of genius in my mind, well it was after I got over the initial shock of thinking my PC was blowing up. More unsettling harmonies make you feel queasy in ‘Remission’ as the drugs wear off and then we are left with final number ‘Dead Windows’ which goes all out into malevolence territory to finish you off.
The importance of Krieg in defining USBM should not be understated; Imperial is a master at his craft and yet again has delivered the goods. I would say the only album from the same country that can possibly touch this, this year is Twilight’s ‘Monument To Time End’ and look who is involved in that! ‘The Isolationist’ is essential, listen to it alone and then fucking kill yourself and make the world a better place*
http://www.myspace.com/officialkrieg
