Much as we would like the spectre of Covid to be forgotten it is still cropping up as a musical theme and the title here is self-explanatory of the effects that we were saddled with. I have noticed that many artists are recording new albums after quite a long gap. It has been over 6 years since we last heard from German musician Georg Börner’s Coldworld project in this respect, the last full-length being the excellent Autumn of 2016. There have been shorter recordings, including various singles from this album in the lead up to it and one wonders if the impetus for it would have happened if it wasn’t for downtime in the “pandemic-induced lockdown.”
At first, I thought this was lacking a bit, especially after the wonderful last album and the time that has passed between them but then after repeated plays things started to make a bit more sense. For a start, the album is mainly an instrumental affair. We don’t get anything in the way of vocals apart from one indignant howl of anguish until the third track and it is not till the fourth that we have anything in the way of expression in this sense. Then again this is probably due to the fact that over the time period many of us, especially those who were truly isolated had nobody to speak to but themselves making it a somewhat pointless exercise.
The mournful and barren sounds of opener ‘Leere’ suggest a world closed down where even a tumbleweed rolling down an otherwise empty street would be a major event. After this short piece we move into ‘Soundtrack To Isolation’ and a lengthy sojourn into abandonment with a post-rock melody that can’t quite escape that oft used apocalyptic refrain from the main 28 Days later theme. Godspeed You! Black Emperor are mentioned in the promo blurb and it is this sort of domain we atmospherically inhabit here rather than any of black metal that some may have been expecting. It is lush and full-bodied and as things develop the sound of violin intertwines with the music becoming a pretty important factor on the album as a whole. A blackened ‘Walz’ forms with those roars perhaps the indignation is due to finding no partner to share it with, we are truly dancing with ourself here and the sombre tone of solitude reflects this as instruments largely drop out. Chants along with a couple of lines of verse are all we really get vocally on ‘We Are Doomed,’ “Blooming silence Flowers of the dead Falling eye lids Void inside the head.’ It’s suitably poetic and not much more is necessary, the violin is filling in the spaces as it weeps away before fifth track ‘Five’ simply focuses on a babbling brook as we escape momentarily into nature, or are we lost in the sewer of the mind as the sound of crying and despair emerges?
There is a very classical feel to songs such as ‘Wound’ via trembling guitar lines and sobbing strings, it’s a depressive affair as one would expect and as the next song title states the ambient stagnation of isolation sees things lasting indeterminably and becoming the norm as days blur together repetitively. Maybe final song ‘Hymnus’ is the emerging light at the end of a very dark tunnel with its post-punk guitar strum and more blackened furrow but then again it could be a fractured psyche that simply cannot emerge and has become institutionalised.
There is a raw honesty here once one has fully (hopefully correctly) interpreted it but it’s a double-edged sword and many may find themselves not wanting to reopen these wounds and revisit this place quite so soon. Others however may still very much be stuck there.
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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