Letharg

Fäulnis fascinates me since I first heard of them. About a year after "Snuff//Hiroshima" was released I went on a concert with about 5 bands, one of which was Fäulnis and despite the shitty sound and that annoying drunk teenager telling me his whole suicide attempt story (which actually gave me quite a laugh to be honest) I was instantly hooked. Today, I'm probably one of the band's most loyal and addicted. Hence I might be biased, but I'll try to give this a reasonable score anyways.

Before describing the music itself, I feel obligated to go over the surrounding background story, because it is mandatory for fully understanding the purpose of the EP as well as its concept. With the recording of the pretty amateurish and rough demo "Cholerik: Eine Aufarbeitung" the band started to work on a (yet to be finished afaik) trilogy consisting of the demo, the debut "Gehirn zwischen Wahn und Sinn" and the probably scraped follow-up "Endstation". While those three released are describing the mental downfall of the protagonist leading him to insanity and gives an insight in his twisted mind ending with the protagonist's suicide, "Letharg" goes into detail. It describes and intonates the protagonist's journey on the threshold between life and death and therefore allows us, the listeners, to hash a glimpse his condition that would result in "Endstation". "Kommando Thanatos" will later go even further and describe death's role in this story even more.

Let's get into the music, shall we? There is only one song to be found which is segmented into 4 segments, the first one marking his steps towards death, the next marks the arrival at the thin line between life and death, and the remaining two are intonating his return. I apologize for going "track-by-track" on this, but there is no way I can describe that on a general note. When it comes to the general production, the EP is quite solid with a slightly fuzzy, swirling sound. It delivers a fair amount of energy while remaining flat, numb and exhausted, just like the concept needs it to be. The guitars are often melt together with the bass and create a semi-thick wall of sound while some soli manage to stick out a little, creating some melancholy here and there. The most energetic part are the vocals which received quite a powerful sound. This leads to the main emotions created by those are about the strongest present here, confronting the listener with rage, agony and despair. Even the spoken word moments tend to created the exact right atmosphere due to this. Yet, there is absolutely nothing fancy about the production, it achieves what it wants, but even including the vocals easily leads to pure boredom for most listeners. One either gets lost in the music or simply can't stand the generated mood. Musically, this goes in a similar direction...

The first segment of the EP consists of one riff that is constantly repeated and is made of about 5 picks at most. This slow and steady, monotonous, partly-depressive guitar line gets paired with same-paced snare/cymbal pounding with some minor blast beat attempts here and there. Bursts of aggression are pretty much nonexistent throughout the whole segment and variety only comes in slight pace changes and the mentioned blasting attempts. The bass creates a solid thick and dark undertone while getting supported by some organ elements and faint industrial influenced background noises that are spread throughout the release. The atmosphere of a barren, lost life is pretty intense, numbness and claustrophobia overwhelms the listener and he gets sucked into the hypnotic suction this release creates. Vocally the first segment is dominated by the amateurish, raspy screams Seuche screws out with tons of labour. There are however already parts where he introduces an early version his iconic punk-influenced, next-to-clean screaming he became famous for in the German underground. In the end of the first part the pace gets a fair bit faster, the music gets more aggressive without getting out of its monotonous habit and Seuche screams in agony and despair and a short spoken-word segment pops up right before the whole thing collapses and all that is left is faint ambient, organs and the sound of rain creating a calm yet sinister and enchanting atmosphere while building the bridge to the second part. Statics and background noises accompany the voice of Seuche reading out the text while remaining pretty much distanced with a glimpse of empathy towards the protagonist. Seuche was interested in more philosophical readings back then so it's not surprising that the text is pretty much filled with sophisticated words and dry description and interpretation of the scene. That approach to the lyrics is pretty much the opposite of what the band pulls of today. Modern Fäulnis releases usually contain punky and very direct in-your-face lyrics filled gore, disgust and the "f"-word.

"Der noch so ekstatisch, emphatisch empfangene Einklang mit der Todessehnsucht war nur ein unbewusstes Anbeten des Lebens, welches mit derart unglaublicher Intensität gelebt wurde."

The last two segments are less easy to distinguish since both are filled with straight black metal with thick riffing and enchanting organ sounds and constant mid-tempo blasts while the vocals return to the early days of Fäulnis. The final segment receives some more modern vocals and has an actually quite casual atmosphere and mood attached to it, proving that the protagonist has accepted his faith while still having darker thoughts hiding behind his subconscious. Burzum-inspired riffing and old-school black metal dominates these sections while also allowing some Bethlehem-influences and jam-like guitar solos. Then, suddenly, the albums stops abruptly with white noise. The suicide. The final step across the border? Death? Who knows.

From a musical perspective this is by no means an interesting listen. There is just not that much going on and what's going on is either extremely calm and monotonous or doesn't even include music at all for the most part. 10 minutes with the same riff over and over and over again doesn't quite qualify as "interesting" for the majority of music fans. Only the last third of the album has some sort of energy, joy of playing and solid black metal that generates at least some action. The EP is in fact extremely boring unless it can drag you into its concept, because artistically it is a well crafted execution of the underlying storyline and concept. Lethargy is fulfilling the release until the euphoric welcoming of death overwhelms the protagonist and gets him excited for a last time. The two parts are separated by a distanced, cold yet involved description of the first suicide attempt. Afterwards the atmosphere gets a fair bit looser and brighter, the protagonist gains energy and apparently restores a fair bit of his sanity that gets negated by the abrupt white noise ending of the EP followed by a Klaus Kinski quote. And then? Nothing.

If you are looking for an exciting listening experience with loads of emotions, energy and power, don't buy this. If you are looking for a generic depressive black metal release, don't buy this. This EP really sticks to its promises and concept and captures the lethargy and monotony of an individual's life on the edge of sanity and death. It's more an artistic piece of music than an entertaining, but it can really drag you down and make you feel the way the protagonist feels. Considering what it accomplishes, I get why it's called boring or generic, because technically it is, but that's kind of the point, even though I would never call it boring. I managed to "get into" this, but it takes time, will and understanding of the underlying concept to somehow "enjoy" the ride. Definitely not for everyone, but oh boy, I would've loved to see that monster played live...

Please note: This is a revised version of my review for Fäulnis‘ “Letharg“. I wasn’t satisfied both with the old review itself and the result I gave.

So, it’s “Letharg” again and to come clean, it’s still not brilliant. Being mostly labeled as suicide by the BM-community, Fäulnis use to create a quite unique style somewhere between the self-destructive Shining and german-school Nargaroth-clones. The band does act decently though, they know how to handle their instruments well and the production is both rough and melodic, good to any black metal listener. This is the point I ignored in my earlier review of this release: Talking about the technique there is not much to complain about, even the songwriting includes nice ideas and some really good riffs.

But still the main point of critics is the lack of atmosphere. The riffs, if there are, seem to be more positive, telling a cute little story although they are undoubtedly created in order to sound as the "german school" does, which is plane, melodic and rather unagitated. The first riff is held for about seven minutes from the beginning, almost too long for not making the listener fall asleep. It does not sound suicidal, yet the EPs concept is about an individual’s journey from insanity to suicide. I just don’t get why the band did this, it’s almost as if they never had listened to their own stuff before releasing it.

As time elapses, some unoriginal riffs alternate with samples and ambient parts. I am the type of listener who is willing to give a release the time it takes to grow – I also like ambient – but nothing follows up here. Ambient, riff, noise, end – not very satisfying.

Concerning the vocals I simply can quote my old review, for I still agree with it: The vocals vary a lot. There are good, insane and painful screams, rather normal and mediocre screams and spoken word, of which the latter are worst. I can hear Seuche grin sometimes, he sounds as considering his own creation ridiclulous. Fantastic, this is what I want of a conceptual suicide EP. NOT!!

For some nice ideas and good skills in instrumental use Fäulnis have earned 40%, but still I don’t recommend to get this. Buy a real conceptual work instead or the band’s later outputs, you won’t regret staying away from this.