It is time to escape to the tranquil and pastoral Austrian Tyrol. Watch that cow-pat it’s freshly laid and still steaming, ouch, damn bitey bugs, achoo, stupid hay-fever. Ah it’s OK, still in the comfort of the living room, but just for a moment there… Dornenreich have been transporting forward thinking listeners to their mountain retreat since 1996. They are one of those bands who started out as more of a metallic entity but have shapeshifted far beyond that to the very outermost fringes of the genre. They did enough in the early days to be accepted by the community and it seems many of us have happily stuck by principal musicians Eviga, Inve and Gilvan through the years. I have always enjoyed them myself but they have been somewhat quiet since last album Freiheit back in 2014, still it’s always a pleasure and time to catch up with them again with the poetically entitled new album Du wilde Leibe Sei (You Wild Love Be).
Indeed, and to roughly translate ‘longing is quickly awoken’ as we delve into these ten tracks. The percussion is hand tapped, thick bass lines flow, acoustic guitar is caressed and vocals delicately at 1st and then rising are delivered. Nothing is hurried, there is little urgency here, the occasional gruff cry rises but we are in a place where life moves slowly, which let’s face it is a welcome escape. The final piece of the jigsaw which is the weeping sound of the violin joins in, enforcing the already strong melody and trembling in the breeze as it were. Dornenreich are as ever incredibly evocative. Their music straddles genres but would fit in more with world music and folk than anything else such as black arcane rock one that they have self-tagged this with. When they add styles such as Spanish guitar to their palette it is more Paco De Luca than Pantera but be assured as their music twists and turns it is always a delight to immerse yourself within its folds.
Naturally things are versed in Germanic tongue but things are so expressive that is not a huge problem you can attempt translating the titles and I have noticed that they have actually done a video clip of single Dein knöchern’ Kosen (Thy Skeletal Kiss) and translated the lyrics into English. If you are new to the band, it’s a good starting point as it merges some stomping rhythms, dextrous guitar work and almost a tribal kick into its naturalistic and more delicate tones. It’s not really about individual tracks here though really, well I have simply lost myself in the overall presentation each time I have played this so far and found myself wandering along with the minstrels spell-binding me as it were. Following down different paths, transfixed by Inve’s delicious violin work, Gilvan’s earthy drum beats and Eviga’s vocals and fret work. The word “earthy” is perhaps a relevant one. I often find something elemental about the group’s albums, sometimes it is obvious as with Flammentriebe being fire. Here though its all very organic, earthy and woodsy for want of a better description. There are things to look out for on this journey such as the sudden vocal snarl on ‘Der Freiheit Verlangen nach goldenen Ketten’ a song that appears to be about freedom, a subject that crops up a couple of times fittingly as ours is temporarily restricted. Then there’s the foot tapping speeding up dervish of ‘Sie machen Mangel zum Geschenk’ which is designed to make anyone get up and dance around the campfire. One moment you are in an acoustic world lost in the caress of the music, the next in this case the stand-out ‘Das Sehnen von Mond und Sonne’ you are urged to sing along whether versed in language or not and roused by the clamour ‘longing for the moon and sun’ and an escape out of that living room and back into the wonders of nature. A very welcome return.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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