The (many) wolves of madness howl, a mournful little melody wafts over the top, and then – somewhat abruptly – chaos ensues.

Rocketing straight to the top of my mental list of “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that, and I’m here for it” album openers, we have Königreichssaal, who on early impressions are possibly about to become one of my favourite bands. I mean, I review a lot of music that I enjoy to a greater or lesser extent, but sometimes I get an album in my inbox that ticks so many of my boxes I was never not going to love it. Psalmen’o’delirium is one of those.

First up, if you’re like me and still very much missing A Forest of Stars’ unique brand of outlandishly deranged blackish metal (I know they’re still a band, but they’re not performing live at the moment, and generally very quiet due to health issues), then pull up a pew and enjoy. I reference them a lot in reviews, because I review a lot that fits into the weirder, crossover end of black metal, and they’re a fairly widely understood reference point for certain broad strokes within that realm. This is a bit closer to home however, in that the vocals here would absolutely slot into any later A Forest of Stars album you care to name. The overall musical style is quite different (although still within the broad church of “blackish”), and probably less accessible to most than A Forest of Stars, but if you need a new band in the “exuberant declamations of a lunatic” vein, Königreichssaal are very much at your service.

Secondly, if they don’t sound like A Forest of Stars, then who do they sound like? The answer to this one is a little more complex, as this is black metal, but it’s the faster, more brittle, relatively deathy end of traditional black, but it’s run through with veins of classic rock, avant-garde…something, the frankly peculiar, some not unwelcome thrash vibes, and a hefty dose of the experimental. This is all thrown into the mix in the context of an album that takes the concept of madness and – pretty much literally – runs with it. It’s the gothy, melodramatically medieval side of Satyricon (complete with organ at one point), as infiltrated by Mister Curse (AFoS) and his accursed legions of madmen, laying out their lives, dreams, nightmares and manifesto…but make it a black metal album.

It’s like someone (a Satyricon fan, amongst other things) took the superbly unsettling traditional folk song Mad Tom of Bedlam/Boys of Bedlam*, and thought “I could make a cracking black metal concept album out of this”, and proceeded to do so, with the aid of a band well-practiced at hiding their many and varied influences under the umbrella of black metal.

[*These are both are the same song, but the title has varied over the years. The Jeana Leslie & Siobhan Miller version is the best version, I will not be accepting any arguments on this one.]

And speaking of Messrs. Wongraven and Haraldstad, I’m not saying that someone involved in the making of Psalmen’o’delirium has listened to a lot of Satyricon in their time (more, possibly, even than me), but even beyond the specific strain of black metal and dramatic, atmospheric medieval setting in play here (which sits somewhere between Dark Medieval Times and Nemesis Divina for the record, although closer to the former), they have a drummer whose role is simply described as “bateria” (battery – Frost has famously been credited solely as “Battery” on every single Satyricon album to date), and there’s even a track called Satyros. None of which is a bad thing, but it does remind me of an album I reviewed last year by Plague God, who in releasing New Veins for Old Blood somehow managed to give the world an early 90s Darkthrone album. Which is impressive for at least two reasons: firstly, it’s definitely not the early 90s anymore, and secondly, Plague God aren’t actually Darkthrone. And much like the week or so I spent getting to grips with New Veins for Old Blood, I’m not actually complaining about any of it, because whatever genre you’re dealing with, the greats within it generally exist for a reason.

That’s not to say Psalmen’o’delirium is anywhere near as carbon a copy of Satyricon as Plague God were of Darkthrone, because there are plenty of other things going on here, that make it a more complex proposition. Such as riffs that are NWOBHM if they’re anything, a droning, rolling, compulsive backbone of drums, riffs and bass that keeps the entire album hurtling forward, more samples than you can shake a stick at (including my personal favourite: “deliric screams from Pętla (1957), directed by Wojciech J. Has”), and lyrics in multiple languages. There’s even a sobbing interlude that forcibly – albeit probably unintentionally – reminds me of Evil Scarecrow’s affectionate parody masterpiece Blacken the Everything. Also, the whole thing is just generally unsettling in ways that I can’t fully explain, which is partly why it reminds me so much of Mad Tom of Bedlam, not to mention a fair chunk of why I like it.

All of which adds up to a pretty entertaining album (assuming you like such things, this is probably going to be an acquired taste even for metalheads), that is frankly (and fittingly) a bit mad on all sorts of levels. If I’m going to nit-pick (which I am, it’s kind of my job), then I’m not entirely convinced by the description of doom/black that this was listed as on the weekly press list. There’s a heavy repetitive element that crashes around in the back of the sound which is vaguely doomy if you take your glasses off and squint at it a bit, but beyond that I agree far more with the deathy black/experimental tags that pop up on Königreichssaal’s Bandcamp page. I’m not sure if they’re tags from the band or from listeners, but either way it’s more accurate than how I was sold this album. Also, as much as I love the brittle fury of this specific type of black metal and all the glorious medievalish theatrics, the close comparisons to AFoS and Satyricon mean I can’t help but wonder how outright deadly this combination would be with a few decent hooks thrown into the mix. I mean, Psalmen and various other parts are oddly (and unexpectedly) ear-wormy, but I’m pretty sure the sound on display here would have to be on a list of controlled substances if you made even some of it catchy as well.

That said, it is addictive in its own way. In keeping with the theme of lunacy, trying to get to the bottom of this album has left a good few pages in my reviews notebook looking very much like the ravings of anything between one and several lunatics. By the deranged, about the deranged, for the deranged if you like, and if you weren’t when you started, you might well be by the end.

(9/10 Ellie)

https://www.facebook.com/konigreichssaal

https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/psalmenodelirium