Gangleri – musicreviews

Yet another project of Dead Man’s Hill, Alle Sagen Ja, Eisengrau, etc. NDE makes a mix between black metal, martial industrial, bombastic orchestrations and noise. The result is a heavy pompous sound with distorted screamed vocals and raging guitars. Quite extreme, quite original, not alway quite good. There are some nice orchestral noisy tracks, but as soon as the guitars set in, I loose my interest. I think this album will appeal to people who like the later sound of Karjalan Sissit with the noisy orchestrations and screamed vocals, but then with guitars added.
Links: NDE, Cold Spring

The latest effort of Der Blutharsch is not a very good one. Their track is instrumental and not very interesting and what is worse, the other band is some kind of boring metal/rock thing (“sludge doom” in their own words) with an awfull track. I guess the text on the single itself (“I Will Not Obey”) means that Herr Julius just keeps doing what he wants. I suppose I cannot always like it. The package is nice though.
Links: Der Blutharsch/WKN, Our Survival Depends On Us

Well, this is a strange compilation cd. The first time I listened to it, caused quite a stir. This cd starts with a couple of very descent dark orchestral tracks of Nocturath, Dream Into Dust, Chants for the Fallen, 4th Sign of the Apocalypse and As All Die. Then there’s a doom metal track by Skepticism and I wondered what was the use of that. But the next track of Krieg is a boring black metal track! Next up is Ember who make quite nice melodic black with horrid vocals (or is it Gothenburg-style death?). Then we have Novembers Doom bringing (as the bandname suggests) doom metal. Ningizzia make …eh… black metal? Well, their homepage url says “darkmetal”, so I guess you can call it that. After this we return to some more moody music with Shellyz Raven who play atmospheric metal with female vocals. The pre-last project is Veinke, this is dark ambient again. The Cold, The Silent closes of with the known gothic/doom metal band Canaan.
All in all I’m not happy with this compilation. The first tracks are really worth buying a compilation, but they should definately have left these shitty metal tracks. I suppose the aim of this cd is building a bridge between the gothic and metal audience, but I don’t know if this will ever really succeed.

When the first online compilations were published by these two websites late 2004 and early 2005 it was in a way still new to offer music like this. A good way to get to know new bands though. More bands and websites started to release online compilations, but it is not really that this took a really high flight. After Ny Regret De Passe, Ad Perpetuam Gloriam and Neo-Form 1, I never really checked the websites where I found these compilations anymore. Recently for some reason I stumbled upon both and both proved to have new compilations available. In the case of Neoform, both old (Allerseelen, Tribe Of Circle, OTWATM) and many new bands. “Honi…” presents ‘two cds’ with mostly smaller or completely new bands. Like I said before, the website names suggest neofolk music, but obviously the websites are maintained by people who use this term to catch the whole scene. There is not much neofolk on the compilations, but more ambient, industrial, a bit of noise, military pop (but not as much as you may expect) and indeed, also a bit of neofolk. Both compilations are pretty good again, especially Neo-Form 2. Happy downloading! Oh, you may have to find software to unpack the files, but nothing that the internet can’t solve. <12/1/07><4>

ISN made a very ‘Ordo-like’ track for which Tomas Petterson made the lyrics and does the vocals. That may be why I could buy a copy of this 7″ yesterday on the Ordo (and IRM) show in Arnhem (Netherlands). “Consume My Burning Darkness” is a nice, orchestral, repetative track with -like I said- vocals of Tomas Petterson. I didn’t know the band Voice Of Hate from Spain, but the line-up suggests that this is a metal band. Their track is a weird one with accoustic guitars and odd vocals, ending in ‘something metalish’. The label is new, this is their first release. There is no internet address, so I suggest you just contact either band to see if you can get one of the 666 copies. <19/2/06><3>