Daemonheim are a new name to me and this is only their second album, but many a gem has been discovered like this etc etc. Apparently these Germans peddle a sound blending black, death, folk and ‘even non metal genres’ shock horror. But who believes PR sheets anyway?
Yeah well the real shock is the above is pretty accurate. This is nicely produced, fairly modern sounding in tone but nowhere near to an industrial sound. It is spritely black metal heavy on the death metal rhythms though not overly dense, with lead work that flits between heavy metal melody, progressive canters and going as far as jazz chords. There are also little folk flourishes like on standout track ‘Harzblut’ which moves neatly between acoustic folk where the vocals remind me of long-forgotten band Angizia, through nice scything black metal and back into folk via a semi-acoustic route without sacrificing the identity of the song to the various individual and loosely connected movements.
That latter point is where I continually stumble with this album though. Taking the title track as an example, what we have there is a series of passages; black, folk, post-rock (yup, that and jazz make up a lot of the non-metal passages unsurprisingly) progressive death that are intended to knit together as a flowing, varied song. Instead what it offers me at least is this idea of a series of musical pools. Connected yes but never entirely fitting together to form a coherent identity of a song. There is more than a touch of the Ephal Duath’s here and there, the counterpoint tune jazzy and discordant flowing back against the more traditional black metal drive. And yes the execution is every bit as accomplished as that sounds; we have serious musicians here and unusually with my criticism above I can also clearly see and hear the vision at work here. Daemonheim know what they are about and where they want to head. Despite the harsher and more thunderous in the blast department approach Tidian really comes down to being another post-rock infected black metal album, but more rarely it doesn’t since like hip-indie musos trying to steal extreme metal clothes. No Daemonheim sound more like metalheads spreading their wings. Think a little of Fen but without their misty, majestic flow, maybe even some pinches of Winterfylleth without the raging black metal teeth.
It comes down to the songs. Whereas tracks like ‘Zwoelf Ritter’ have some gorgeous passages of melancholy melody or ‘Nastrand’ has some great driving moments of almost Immortal or Amon Amarth-like fervour the digression into tributaries rather than rowing the main river constantly throws me off until I find myself in a wetland of island clumps and no real point of reference. I find myself clinging to no theme or atmosphere I’m afraid.
That’s the downside. The upside is that quite aside from the musicianship and the vision, both of which are clear I really do think Deamonheim have a good potential audience. Like your progressive metal but wish it was just a little more black and nodded towards the pagan? Here you are. Great place to start.
Me, I’m heading back to land. This place is not for me, sadly.
(6.5/10 Gizmo)
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