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For this review we’re jumping back to the European continent with Weltschmerz. The four (five including live set-up) piece hail from Amersfoort, The Netherlands, and in March this year released their first full-length, 8 track album; ‘Odium Humani Generis’, which we thought we’d examine a little. As per usual, find the necessary links below the post.
Here at UltimateUlulation we hadn’t heard of Weltschmerz before. We weren’t quite sure what we were getting ourselves into, and the emphasis with which the band describes themselves as a “ferocious live band” on their websites didn’t really allay our fears…
We like to judge these things for ourselves.
However, ‘Ab Æterno’, track one, starts promisingly and doesn’t turn us off immediately, and eventually becomes enjoyable when the vocals kick in. The vocalist, Hreim, knows what he’s charged with and gets on with putting out quality stuff. It’s a 05:30 minute long song and it jumps around tempos and time sigs pretty fast for such a short song. But there’s no doubt about their skill. However, It’s not a done deal here yet and sounds a little unfocused. Based on this track alone, we were a little dubious about the rest of the album. Weltschmerz seem to be right up our alley but there’s some disagreement about the levels of the vocals. Are they too clean? Is that causing them to overshadow the music a bit? Maybe, at least we started to think so. But, we put these things aside to crack on.
Tracks two and three don’t divide us so much. ‘Ending Your Life’ and ‘None of Us Will See Heaven’ is a huge chunk of what we love about Black Metal; fast, lulling, vicious, obscure, skilful, and dark as fuck. We start to see we were a little too quick to judge the album based on the first song. I, for one, am glad that the preceeding song was so different from these.
As ‘Geschrei in der Nacht’, kicks off with a slow and rhythmic, burzum-esque atmospheric intro, we’ve all pretty much agreed we jumped the gun judging Weltschmerz. The music is good, the band are talented, and it’s a grim fucking delight. As for their claims of a ferocious live show, we no longer doubt them, and intend to be right up the front whenever we get the opportunity to see them.
The album is rounded off by ‘Asmodeus’ and ‘The Night is My Domain’, and both keep up the standard of the rest of the recording. The drums in ‘Asmodeus’ in particular catch our attention, there’s nice melodies and speed without making the music sound like it’s chasing some careless, speed-freak thrash drummer.
The album is good. It surprised us and to be honest it still divides us a little but that makes it more interesting. Go and listen to it yourself and maybe you’ll see what we mean.
Here’s some links to checking these guys out:
http://www.facebook.com/weltschmerzmetal
http://www.weltschmerzbm.nl
And here’s some of our own links, follow some of them.
http://www.facebook.com/ultimateululation
ultimateululation@gmail.com
Until next time,
UU
ultimateululation 