Dornenreich – Flammentriebe

If you’re just tuning in, we have two outs, bottom of the ninth inning . . . bases are loaded and the home team is down by three runs . . . shuffling up to the plate with his head down in his typical shy fashion . . . number 666 . . . Dornenreich steps into the batter’s box for Team Prophecy Productions. I tell ya’ Racer, in all my years of watching the game, breathing in its subtle intricacies, I’ve never seen a team come through in the clutch like this Prophecy team, and we have the makings for yet another instant classic . . . a game that will live on forever in the history books of the greatest games ever played! And would you look at that!!! As if on cue, Dornenreich chases a curveball out of the strike zone . . . lined over the left fielders head . . . and all he can do is watch as the ball easily clears the outfield wall and is now a souvenir for the rabid fans who have waited a lifetime for this moment! Do you believe in miracles? I can’t believe my eyes! Racer . . . any comments? You are the color guy after all.

Sorry about that, folks . . . with spring training starting and baseball right around the corner, I couldn’t fight the urge to draw some bizarrely apt correlation between the sport and the amazing work that Prophecy Production consistently releases, and the talents of these guys from Dornenreich have displayed on their latest release entitled Flammentriebe.

Flammentriebe is black metal with an avant tinge, somewhat shoe-gazer, brutal and brackish, beautiful and morose. I first stumbled on Dornenreich on the Prophecy compilation Whom the Moon a Nightsong Sings and found the track to be one of the most compelling, so once the promo for Flammentriebe made its way to me, suffice it to say that I was more than intrigued, maybe even a wee bit on the excited side. By now, you all should know that I love it when musicians push the boundaries of a musical genre, eclipsing any pre-conceived ideas as to what we all had for said genre, permanently stamping their fingerprint to a musical style for all to witness and absorb through the ages. Dornenreich take that full on aggressive black metal style of music and add fantastic elements that make my ears tickle with excitement . . . beautiful and lush acoustic guitar passages, ambient and atmospheric interludes, violins that add more than a delicate texture, acting as one of the key instruments throughout . . . and then there’s a compositional complexity that is like junk shot into my veins to ease my proggy addiction. To draw comparisons with the outside world, let’s take the ambitious musical nature of Opeth, mix it with the pure, unadulterated natural blackened death styling’s of Khold, mix that all with the show-gazing subtleties of label mates Alcest and Les Discrets, and then add a style that can only be Dornenreich’s alone, y’know . . . those intricate little sounds, moods, and tones that can’t be pinned on any other band. I absolutely love this album!

Dornenreich hail from Austria and Flammentriebe is completely written and performed in the bands native tongue, but that shouldn’t be a turn off to anybody. The emotions transcend any language barrier, and in the case of Flammentriebe, actually makes the songs sound that much more important and immediate. The opening track, “Flammenmensch,” is a five minute gem of utter brilliance! After a tentative plucking of an acoustic guitar introduces us to the album, the electric version of the instrument creates that sonic wall that seems to permeate in the black metal world, then we get the blood curdling screams, and a little double bass drum/blastbeat  cacophony, and it’s all performed the way I love it . . . with immediacy and honesty, and to keep the wary ear entangled in the web of intrigue, Dornenreich change things up with stunning breaks that allow the song to breath and grow more ominous. Here’s where things get really interesting . . . listen closely to the double, triple, tendon-tearing pick attack of the guitars and you’ll hear the violins in tight accompaniment, adding another texture that I’ve never heard before . . . but listen closely coz’ it can get lost in the mix a bit. Totally bitchin’ effect and for me adds a completely different dimension to the music and what could be.

“Der Wunde Trieb” immediately picks up with the violins leading the way, and then stepping back to let the rest of the band beat us senseless. Then, the violins reappear, adding this great mournful and haunting effect to the blistering black metal tirades. Glorious in its darkness and oppressiveness, “Der Wunde Trieb” is epic metal filled with awesome moments of nuance, hefty technical skill, and emotional depth that will take more than a handful of listening sessions to fully comprehend. By the time you get to “Tief im Land” you should be well primed for one of the most beautifully complex and emotionally savage songs on the album. Again, opening with an acoustic guitar and suddenly bursting with electricity, this song is a full on Odyssian journey of experimentation and musical expression. To listen to the way these guys pull back one instrument to allow another to propel the song and then vice versa, it’s like watching a perfectly choreographed chorus line or, better yet, the inner working of a machine at work . . . all the pieces working together to create motion but all those piece doing their own individual job. “Tief im Land” is a clinic on composition and performance that should be taught at every musical institution. So declareth the Pope. . . so let it be done!

“Wolfpuls” and “Wandel Geschehe” follow suit with more of the aforementioned tendencies, violins working in conjunction with the bombast of the traditional black metal soundings, adding an element of class that one doesn’t find with many black metal acts. “Wolfpuls” is more of a grinding, throbbing, pulsating metallic gem while “Wandel Gerschehe” acts more as a wooden hulled ship cresting wave after roiling wave on the open seas, dipping deep into the valleys of despair, then being propelled to the peak of the wave before crashing down again. Both songs will have you lost within yourself, contemplating the greater meaning of it all and wondering why you hadn’t created such masterful work in your own life. “In Allem Weben” is another sterling example of the musical proficiency that Dornenreich seems to wield within their souls, effortlessly piecing passages together that performed by any other band may never come out sounding half this good. Seamlessly flowing from one expressive passage to another, pummeling the senses with malevolent sounds while incorporating more serene and subtle elements to keep the song from being one dimensional, these guys do a masterful job of challenging the listener, but never over-challenging them.

Flammentriebe is easily at the top of this year’s “Must Have” list. Yeah, it’s early in the year and there’s a great chance it will supplanted by another amazing album, but for the time being, I’m going to spin this gem as much as I possibly can. The layers of sound that make up this album keep me interested and help push my imagination to places I haven’t seen in a long, long time. The album rocks, yet it does so in a very intelligent manner . . . kinda’ like a premeditated murder that stumps the world’s greatest detectives. And yes, to conclude the earlier analogy of this piece, it’s a bases clearing game winning grand slam that leaves Dornenreich being carried off on the shoulders of his team mates to the cheers of thousands. Game ball should go to Prophecy for recognizing the raw talents of this band and getting them prepped for the big leagues!

Pope

http://dornenreich.com/

http://www.prophecyproductions.de/front_content.php?idcat=258&idart=397&releaseid=204

Opeth - In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall

No matter how hard I try, how many fancy words I string together, to try and describe Opeth’s In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall, I fear I simply won’t do this package it’s due justice. To aptly describe this majestic release, I would have to channel the essence of James Michener, who’s thousand page epics have a tendency to sprawl across hundreds, nay . . . thousands of years of a subjects existence, depicting the great land movements, the tectonic shifts and violent volcanic episodes that formed the environment that the subject may call home. I would then have to detail out every last bit of emotion and nuance from the main character(s), so rich in detail that you would feel that you’ve just spent the last century walking in their shoes. Then, I’d weave such an intricate tapestry of words that you would swear that you could taste the dust of a country road on your tongue, feel the bitter cold of a Chesapeake winter, or smell the floral scents of perfume on a maidens breast . . . or, in the case of Opeth, the stinging taste of battery acid on your tongue, the sweltering heat of an enclosed venue, or the ripening smell of the bodies struggling within said venue.

I can use all of those nifty adjectives that we writers like to use so much. Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Astonishing. Yeah, they all work because they do express some amount of excitement about that which they are describing. But in the case of In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall, they’re simply not adequate enough descriptors. A four disc vinyl set with two DVD’s will never adequately be described by one word, especially a set as painstakingly detailed as this particular issue. This set deserves . . . no, requires a tome of words to form a shadow of what is actually going on. The set will require another volume to add color.

For Opeth’s twentieth anniversary, Mikael Akerfeldt and company decided to do a short tour, hitting a few venues that harbor an image of class and respect, and then release the subsequent recordings in a package that would be represent the band and cater to the record collecting masses (of those of us who are still out here.) The two album set is all recorded live and spans the full career of Opeth, paying homage to many of the members of the band who have since moved on, and spotlighting with special attention their breakout album, Blackwater Park, by performing it in its entirety. The packaging on this set draws me back to those glorious days of the 1970’s, an era when rock n’ roll, progressive music, whatever, paid close attention to the visual marketing of the album art, the imagery, the overall sensation of buying a record and vegging for hours with the music as the soundtrack to the visual stimuli that the artist had created . . . a phenomenon that was inhibited by the CD revolution and completely lost in the digital age. This particular box set includes a concert poster and a twenty page book with “Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Astonishing” photos from the concert at The Royal Albert Hall . . . all serious eye candy to lose oneself while the vinyl does its glorious dance on the turntable.

However, the imagery really means nothing if the musical quality isn’t there. Let’s face it. We all have those great pieces of vinyl where the album art is infinitely superior than the musical quality . . . Meatloaf, I’m looking at you. In the case of In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall, the musical quality is sharp, loud, and clearer than just about any live recording I’ve heard, and the performances are a testament to the physical and mental abilities of these five musicians. I’ve said it before, with the advent of Pro Tools and all of the various technical studio tricks, recording ten minute epics that shift moods, musical styles, tempos, and time signatures is cool, but it’s almost too easy. Maybe I’ve become jaded. But to pull off that feat live, without a net, as they say . . . that, my friends, is what being a musician is all about! To put this latest live adventure into perspective, imagine that Opeth is playing all of Blackwater Park, which they do, without fucking up the parts and transitions (coz’ you should know that there are plenty of those lying around) and then follow it up with an additional eight songs that touch on every variation of the bands creativity, every stylistic change, every musical nuance from the last twenty years. Breath taking.

I could go through every song and wax poetic about their deeper meaning to my every heartbeat, but that got old the second I thought about it. Instead, you really need to listen for yourselves. In particular, “Bleak,” “Blackwater Park,” “Advent,” “The Moor,” “Harlequin Forest,” and set closer “The Lotus Eater” jump to mind as the moments that I felt the greatest shiver of someone walking on my grave, of staring into the mesmerizing gaze of a thousand succubi, or breathing in the noxious and intoxicating fumes of Hades. I can’t help but marvel at the performances of these musicians, the rich textures that they apply with their respective instruments, and the overall exhilarating physical sensation that I get when I hear the sounds and tones spew from my speakers and bathe me in their brilliance.

After basking in the sonic splendor of the aforementioned four discs, I made my way to the Ripple Theater and dropped in the DVD’s. “Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Astonishing.” I honestly don’t think I breathed for something like four hours. Mouth agape, I stared . . . completely transfixed on the visual performance of this concert. The band must have used something like 3,000 cameras (a slight exaggeration) for this production. We had the standard center stage angle, left stage angle, right stage angle . . . got a little creative with the behind the band, over-the-shoulder angle, some nice crowd angles and then a few nice shots of the drummers foot (always a fan of the drummers foot work) . . . and then there were the camera angles where I swear I could count the musicians’ nose hair. The visuals were cool, nothing interstellar like a band mascot running out on stage and catching fire (as cool as that always is), just clean and concise images that help separate Opeth from any other band on the face of the planet. I found the stage presence of the various band members intriguing. Martin Mendez with his hair whipping from side to side, Fredrik Akesson dropping into the classic metal headbanging pose, the relaxed, almost bored look of drummer Martin Axenrot, and maniacal glare and eccentric demeanor of keyboardist Per Wiberg . . . and, of course, the stalwart center figure of Mikael Akerfeldt . . . they all just had that look!  

When watching this, note the guitar issues that the band has during particular songs. With a simple wave of his hand, Mikael Akerfeldt signaled to his guitar tech, and without panic, without stepping away from the mic, continues belting out his trademark death growl with the same sincerity as we’ve grown to become accustomed . . . guitar tech switches out guitars in mid vocal line and BAM! He disappears and the show goes on. I give a nod of respect to the professionalism that Akerfeldt shows here because I’ve seen the opposite from bands in the past, people become flustered, they freeze or start throwing tantrums, ultimately making the show suffer. Not here, not with Opeth. The best part though is in the second set closer, “The Lotus Eater,” as guitarist Fredrik Akesson has his own set of technical issues with his gear. In listening to the LP version, it simply sounds like the band has an extended quiet passage going on in the song, kind of like they’re playing with the crowd a bit . . . as if this was a planned break. Seeing what actually happened fills in the gaps from the pure audio portion, but I think it’s interesting how the mind goes places based on the information it’s given.

Yeah, I spent more money than I could really afford on this production, but food is overrated anyway. Hey! It’s not like anyone’s ever really starved to death, right? In truth, based on how much I want to listen to this album, and spend four-plus hours glued to my television watching this performance, how excited I get when I start talking about this album to people, how many words I just wrote as tribute on this release, hell . . . I’d spend the money all over again. If you’re an Opeth fan and you’re on the fence about this album for any reason, then I would hope that these words have acted a gentle nudge to knock you off the fence. If you’re new to Opeth and are looking for a jumping off point to get into this band, this is the place to do it. You get Blackwater Park in its entirety and select choices from every album before and since, with performances that capture the band at the height of its creative brilliance. If you don’t like Opeth and have no interest in the band whatsoever, I thank you for reading this far though I’m confused why you would have spent your time doing so.  -  Pope    

FYI – this release does come in numerous formats, so don’t feel that because I wrote about the vinyl edition that you have no other choices. Rock on! 

--Pope

buy here: Opeth - In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall (2DVD/3CD)
buy here: DVD Opeth - In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall (2DVD)
buy here: mp3: In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall

www.opeth.com