VVorldVVithoutEnd

50 minutes of merciless raw German chaos. A lot of "black metal"" bands lose the real spirit of black metal and gravitate instead to faux rawness, polishing production until you can scarcely find the trace of black metal in the sound in order to appeal to wider audiences. Katharsis is not that.

Katharsis knows what it is, Vvorld Vvithout End knows what its purpose is. A lot of people slate Katharsis for being "just a Darkthrone copy", and the influence is clearly there -- I believe this album's title is taken from lyrics in In the Shadow of the Horns -- they're not ashamed of the influence, but they have built on Darkthrone's sound in their own way, particularly vocally. Katharsis is more abrasive, more chaotic, more enraged and more focused than Darkthrone.

The guitars are saws, rusty and serrated knives that rip at the eardrums. They frequently have frenzied, dissonant and rapid passages that build up into melodic, long and drawn out riffs that are easier to follow: kind and gentle relative to those preceding moments of ramping chaos. The bass is pretty audible but never overpowering, which is welcome in this style, and more consistent. The drums blast away shamelessly and excessively, exactly what it says on the tin. The vocals cruise over the riffs with some maddened zeal, I'd describe them as often frenzied but also accenting the key points of the instruments, especially the drums. These high-pitched Nazgul-type wails come and go at times, incredibly excessive and horrid, Katharsis likely boasts to have my favourite vocals in all black metal.

I enjoy the narrative of the tracklist too. It's instant and straight into the action on Eden Belovv, it doesn't bother you with the usual run of the mill long ambient track that everybody skips past. Everything between the beginning and end is suspenseful, building up towards the 16 minute epic serving as a title track which crowns the album perfectly. But it never ends, it only fades out steadily: world without end.

Black metal is probably one of the most varied subgenres in metal music. You can have more atmospheric and meditative works like Paysage d'Hiver or Burzum, or maybe something of the more melodic flavor like Dissection or Dawn. Alternatively, you could have something absolutely unforgiving and intense. While the black metal umbrella features some undoubtedly beautiful works, it also features some of the ugliest, most intense music made. Katharsis is one of those bands, one that foregoes atmosphere, melody, the usage of the letter 'W', folk instrumentation, and all that boring poser nonsense calling itself "black metal".

Katharsis was at first described to me as a Darkthrone worship band, but I find that they take it to such an extreme level that it becomes something else entirely. For reviewing purposes I relistened to Darkthrone's first 2 black metal albums -- A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Under a Funeral Moon -- and I do hear some similarities, specifically in the songwriting and some of the riffing. However, VVorldVVithoutEnd does sound very distinct from the band they take from the most. It's a much more extreme and harrowing experience, and this is mostly due to the production and the vocals. While similar to Nocturno Culto's, these have an added echo effect similar to something you'd hear in a Negative Plane or a Spirit Possession. They also sound much more unhinged and manic I find, sometimes the vocalist does these high pitched screams, and other times he starts laughing maniacally, and these moments make the album that much more eerie.

Structure-wise, this album features lots of fast and very intense moments, I'd say for most of its runtime, but also gives a lot of room to breathe in these slower moments, similar to Under a Funeral Moon. Don't get me wrong however, these slower moments don't feel any less intense, and this is due to the production feeling so suffocating and overwhelming. Not in an overproduced way, but more in a "every instrument is very clearly audible and they're all doing insane stuff at the same time HELP", and this is a very good thing. Even the bass is very audible here, which is very welcome. The album even fakes the audience out at the very end of the album. It makes you think there's gonna be an epic and triumphant finale, a light at the end of the tunnel if you will, when they introduce synths and chants on the last leg of the song, and it's honestly a cool moment. But no, afterwards the album goes back to its usual sound, and slowly fades away, literally foregoing an ending to the song and the album as a whole. A VVorldVVithoutEnd indeed.

I really, really like this album. While I'm often not a fan of very blasty and overwhelming metal, I find that Katharsis do it in a way that is so compelling and varied. VVorldVVithoutEnd is a very intense listen, but one that is so purely "black metal". Jokes aside, this isn't to say that the more atmospheric and melodic kind isn't black metal, but taking the subgenre back to its roots while still modernizing it feels so right and so very "kvlt". While not the flavor of black metal, let alone metal in general, I usually look for, this is probably an album that I will come back to often.

Originally published on Rate Your Music

Have you been told about evil yet? As in real, REAL evil? If not, Katharsis are here to set the record straight.

First, you'll have to find the CD. A hint: the artwork is dark red and black, adorned with magical symbols and writings in some strange alphabet. The sides of the CD have only the inscriptions "K T H R S S" on one and "V V V V N D" on the other. That's it. But, once you have obtained it, you will realize that it was well worth the effort.

VVorldVVithoutEnd, the third album by the Zwickau, Germany based trio, is one of those rare albums that will have your attention riveted to the speakers from the very first second, and then throughout all of the six songs and 52 minutes of it. Take the first track, "Eden Belovv," as an example: It begins with a blastbeat supporting a classic, old-school black metal riff — a simple, bastard, stuttering, straightforward one. Just as it has been fully absorbed, the guitar descends into a precipice of pure mayhem. It goes slower, it goes faster. Hard to distinguish, but commanding the attention. At times deceitfully simple, yet try to find a distinctive pattern and most likely you will fail.

The vocals aren't there to offer help either — Drakh's screams seem to be overseeing the music, sometimes going with the flow, sometimes whipping the frenzied mass below them, but always remaining unpredictable. And what are the drums doing? Who knows. At most times following the guitars, but never in the same way. But these, as they are, are just technicalities. Not at all enough to describe the music. Let's change the perspective then.

VVorldVVithoutEnd is a nightmare. Once you have been foolish enough to press "play," you will not know what has hit you. Simple as that. The opening track literally sucks you in. Then, there is no pause between tracks one and two, and they already bring so much confusion that only by the time you've reached about a half of the 11-minute third track, "VVytchdance," you somehow realize that you are listening to one, repeating riff. All you will be able to perceive are the frenzied, devilish guitars lulling you into false security and then, just when you start thinking you know what is going on, destroying it.

Then, you will hear the screams. But you will not know where they are coming from. They are there, yet they aren't. They are telling you something, and you are going to hear it whether you wanted it or not. If your concentration wears thin, you might find yourself thinking about claustrophobic, depressive things that you normally wouldn't dream of thinking about. The apparent cacophonous mess of sounds is carefully controlled, and it establishes Katharsis as one of the few, those whose playing and songwriting doesn't simply consist of managing notes and rhythms. Instead, Katharsis are here to twist and turn sounds and moods. Although, truth be told, on VVorldVVithoutEnd, there is but one mood. And it is not a bright one.

So, if you see the abovementioned artwork and have some cash to spend, stop. Think about it first. Ask yourself if it is time to let Satan in your life. Then decide at your own risk.

There is not another black metal album that communicates pure hell and fucking hatred like VVorldVVithoutEnd. There is something about the album -- I'm not even sure what it is -- that makes its violence and hatred contagious. While this is a power most black metal bands would like to think they have over the listener, in truth it's the sort of aura reserved only for the highest elite. De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is the only classic to come to mind that really had this effect. In more recent times, Antaeus are the only other group that consistently manage to dredge up those same feelings of malevolence in me as a listener.

Yeah, it could be said I've nurtured a fascination with Katharsis and their works. VVorldVVithoutEnd doesn't only stand as their best work; it is one of the few "traditional" black metal albums this side of the new millennium that could be said to match or even surpass the precedent laid down by their forefathers. Incidentally, Katharsis began in humbler beginnings as above-average Darkthrone worship. This sense of continuity is really interesting. While Darkthrone's classic material is untouchable with regards to its cold atmosphere and innovation, I always got the feeling at the end of the day that Nocturno and Fenriz were essentially nice guys making evil music. With Katharsis it feels like there's far less of a distinction between the artist and the art. VVorldVVithoutEnd could have only been the work of true, evil maniacs. A group of equally talented but spiritually average guys could have tried to retrace the same steps, used the same tricks, and it wouldn't come anywhere close to the same hateful enshrinement here.

The atmosphere, such as it is, cannot be put into proper words. It must be felt more than pondered intellectually. That said, there are some clear techniques Katharsis are using to get their demented fervour across. For one, while the riffs are clearly drawn from the roots of classic-era Darkthrone, Katharsis structure their songs with a far more frantic, chaotic hand. Riffs that may have come across as traditional on their own sound like nothing of the sort when they're checked out in context of the songwriting. Ideas will clash and clatter one after another, more hyperactive and dissonant than their Second Wave inspirations. Scorn's emphasis on rancid guitar feedback (best heard on the intro to "VVytchdance") crowds up the sound. Also notable are the prominent bass lines, which manage to add further weight to some of the album's most intense moments.

No mention of this album can go without regard for Drakh's vocal performance. Clouded beneath a heavy sheet of delay effects, his maniacal screams are, above and away, the most fucked up and insane-sounding vocals I've heard in black metal. That could be another way of saying they're the best. From everything I've heard about Drakh, it doesn't take a lot for me to believe that the madness is completely real. The most intense moments on VVorldVVithoutEnd usually have his high shrieks to thank. At times here the mania is too much to be contained by typical rasps, he'll burst into a tuneless, shrieking falsetto. The album's centrepiece "VVytchdance" is the best place to hear this, and it's one of the very few instances in a 00s' black metal album that managed to genuinely scare me. This is made the more impressive by the fact that Katharsis' lyrics convey the same insanity as the music. Is there another chaotic black metal band that grasps rhyme patterns like Katharsis? The archaisms in the spelling have been done by other bands in the past, but no one goes as far or takes it so seriously as they do. Katharsis' lyrics may lack the utmost intellectual heft of, say, their NED labelmates in Deathspell Omega, but they're every bit as effective in their Satanic devotion.

Like Funeral Mist's Salvation, this is an album that takes the traditions of Second Wave black metal to their furthest logical conclusions. Other bands may have taken black metal to more bizarre reaches, but only do so at the cost of blurring their definition as a black metal act. There's no such confusion on VVorldVVithoutEnd. Even if the album consistently feels somewhat frontloaded with regard to its most memorable moments, it is hard to fault Katharsis for a single step they took in making this album. The agonizing pain and gleeful hatred of VVorldVVithoutEnd has not worn out for a second. As I'm writing this, it's only a few days until the album is a full decade old. Are there so many albums that would truly sound as depraved and horrific, even as the rest of the world had ten years to catch up? This is one of the most striking, memorable and immersive albums I've heard in my life. It's a shame some may never recognize it for the masterpiece it is.

This reminds me somewhat of Drastus in that it's structurally interesting but not nearly as much in any other respect. Unlike Drastus, Katharsis doesn't even have the aesthetic charm of the French band; apart from the sort of linear, organic structuring of the songs on 'VVorldVVithoutEnd', there's literally nothing here to grab the listener's attention. Accusations leveled at Katharsis that they're nothing more than a Darkthrone clone are simplistic but ultimately true; all this album feels like is a modernized form of 'Under A Funeral Moon', only without that album's distinctive riffing and fascinating tracks. To be fair, I might not be as hard on this if it wasn't already associated with the orthodox black metal movement, something I loathe more than reruns of 'The View', but somehow that pretense actually makes this much more offensive to me and reduces it from a mediocre black metal album to a pretty lame one.

The good: the structures of these songs are pretty organic. There's not a huge amount of repetition and to be completely honest this seems substantially more ambitious than the majority of other similarly styled albums from the modern black metal scene. The bad: no amount of interesting structuring is going to make up for the fact that the riffs are all rehashed from early Darkthrone or Mayhem and create absolutely no atmosphere. For an album with such an ambitious vibe, the production is really bad: simple, primitive, sawing, and more fitting an early Bathory album than anything with the sort of scope that this album attempts to achieve. The problem extends down to the rest of the music: I get that they're trying to fuse a more traditional and raw style of black metal with more epic structuring, but it falls completely flat because the music really has no dynamics. It just operates at one general tempo and melodic mode and doesn't provide any atmosphere.

The riffs themselves are plain, just dissonant tremolo numbers ala 'Under A Funeral Moon' or rockish crunch chords stretching back to old Celtic Frost. There's no real hint of melody or complexity to them, there's just a lot of them strung together. There's no rise and fall to the music; no climactic moments, no surprising turns. Just riff after riff laid end to end. This alone does not create anything interesting: the riffs themselves have to be solid for such structuring to work out. Like Drastus, this is interesting without being enjoyable just because, as long and ambitious as the tracks are, they all sound like they were written in an afternoon and more time was spent memorizing riff order than making sure those riffs are good. I truly don't understand what others see in this record; yeah, it's neat in some ways, but don't I listen to metal to FEEL something?

Like just about every NoEvDia release, this does nothing for me. I guess fans of stuff like Clandestine Blaze might be impressed, but this just falls flat for me; it's all ambition and flash without any real strength of content. There's much more offensive orthodox black metal out there, but not much of it feels as plain and bland as this.

I remember the first time I listened to this, about six months ago; it was my first experience with this relatively unknown German band, and I was wondering what all the big fuss about them was. The first thing that popped into my head after hearing this was, "what the fuck just happened?" It took me a grand total of six back to back listens to make any sense of what was going on. Due to some technical issues (I lost a good part of my music library), I didn't listen to it again until recently.

This is Katharsis' third full-length, and it consists of six tracks of pure chaotic black metal. Every riff, every beat, every demented scream creates a maelstrom of chaos that I haven't experienced since listening to Funeral Mist's Salvation (NB: this is not a comparison to actual music, just the feeling that it evokes). Forget frills and silly trappings; this album has none. The riffs are reminiscent of Darkthrone only with a lot more variation, which of course means nothing but good. The drumming meted out by M.K. is varied, switching from blastbeats to slower beats in a heartbeat and back, thus maintaining the maelstrom effect. Drakh's vocals are above that of your average black metal screamer and considerably more varied than in 666, for example; the man's vocals are highly distorted shrieks reminiscent of Wrest's of Leviathan fame, but once in a while he throws in a falsetto screech which oddly fits into the music; it sounds like Drakh is being tortured in a cave somewhere by the other band members, who are recording it all on tape. The lyrics aren't the best thing I've ever read, but neither are they particularly bad; they deal mostly with satanism and death, although you most likely won't be able to understand any of it in the actual music unless you have the lyrics in front of you.

Some longtime fans were disappointed with this release, due to the dramatic change of sound, and to a certain degree, a change of style. In my mind however, this is a perfect example of an album that couldn't have been better thought out. Listening to it leaves me the impression of simultaneously drowning in a river and being torn apart by a school of piranha's... I know this description is a little awkward, but it sums it up nicely in my mind. For fans of Darkthrone, Averse Sefira... Basically anything chaotic.

Few bands manage to take the aggression and downright ugly atmosphere of bands such as Darkthrone and Mayhem to new heights. Germany’s Katharsis is pure insanity in the truest sense. World Without End, from beginning to end, is in your face raw fast black metal that is very unique and yet nostalgic. Every proceeding minute of this album makes you colder than you were the minute before. With shrieks of pain being shouted in a somewhat ritualistic fashion at times and razzing and “buzz saw” guitars invoking the destruction of all that is pure and holy over and over again, this album significantly defines one of the undisputed bands leading the current wave in underground black metal: Katharsis.

First of all, without Drakh’s punishing and hideous vocals, this album wouldn’t be as good as it is. Not in a long time have I heard vocals with such demanding command in Black Metal such as these. Something I found very unordinary but yet useful is the Petrozza “End of the World”-like shrieks. For those of you who don’t know who Miland Petrozza and Tormentor is, they were a German Thrash band that later went on to form Kreator. Anyways, these shrieks Drakh uses throughout the album really give his vocals uniqueness of the likes of which I have never heard. Some of the harshest and uncompromising vocals I’ve ever heard.

As I said before, the guitars are very buzz saw like and more on the treble side, like all Katharsis releases. They slay through the whole album like early ‘90s Norwegian Black Metal, but in some cases they actually manage to pass even THOSE legendary bands of Norway in terms of riffing and the order of them. Both slow and face paced riffs are composed, tremolo is ever present here, as to be expected, and the guitar interludes scattered throughout some of the songs are fantastic, almost like a preview into the next realm of Hell itself.

The drums are, for the most part, extremely fast at some points and somewhat mellow at others. Cymbals colorfully fill the whole album, while old-school blast beats pound away in relentless turmoil, adding extra force to the guitars and vocals. The production fits well for this release, I would consider it more on the raw side, but definitely listenable and enjoyable. The volume of this album is deafeningly high though, which is a plus in some people’s book, mine especially.

This album doesn’t belong with the rest of the albums of 2006. It is too good to be put in that same category. This album won’t leave your cd player without exposing to you why it was there in the first place. I fail to find any flaws or uninteresting parts in this album, with that giving it even more credit for being an album with only 6 songs and taking over 50 minutes of your well spent time. Truly one of the best Black Metal albums of the 21st century, and I’ll even go as far to say that “World Without End” is one of the harshest, coldest, uncompromising, and ugly Black Metal albums ever released, in all honesty, it is that good. And what’s more, the booklet has these exact words written in it: “Listen in Darkness at maximum volume.” Definitely worth the money spent and then some, I recommend it to all Black Metal fans of the aforementioned qualities.

Katharsis is a band that refuses to compromise. Each release (full length) prior to VVORLDVVITHOUTEND has been quite predictable, which was one of the few things I've held against them. They've always released material that was far better than your average Black Metal, but generally more and more of the same. Bands who refuse change generally stagnate and die off. What we have here is a lifesaver for Katharsis. Although it's by no means a dramatic change of direction, it is still a giant step forward.

The production is very eardrum-friendly. That's not to say that it's polished and clean in any respect, but it is clear enough to hear what each instrument is doing (including the bass). It suits the album quite well.

In essence, this is the same Katharsis that has always been, but there is a clear improvement in terms of songwriting, arrangement, and execution. You still have the raw, chaotic aggression that Katharsis is known for. The vocals have much more depth and stand as some of the best in black metal today. The riffs are constructed more carefully than in the past, while still avoiding complexity altogether. My only complaint lies in the drumming. The drums are overplayed through most of the album and, for the most part, lack any memorable moments. This is only a slight nuisance as it allows for the rest of the music to shine through.

The album can be seen as a single song or idea, broken up into six tracks to spare those with short attention spans. There are some brief interludes from the chaos that allow some breathing room, which is painfully absent from most albums in this vein of black metal. Each track flows into the next almost seamlessly, and by the time the title track kicks in, everything has fallen into place. The title track alone is worthy of the album price. Even the aforementioned (over)drumming is absolutely brilliant, making for an excellent finale.

It must be said that this record is not background noise or a violent soundtrack to housecleaning. The listener should pay attention to catch the subleties that make this album great. At first glance, this could be seen as just another super fast, rape-eardrums-while-tipping-your-hat-in-the-direction-of-darkthrone black metal record. After a few listens, it becomes apparent that nothing could be further from the truth. After a few more, the listener begins to realize that this is a brilliant work of original black art from start to finish.

In conclusion, this record is worth every cent of its price and more. As it stands, this is easily one of my top picks for 2006 thus far. Essential for any fan of black metal. Why haven't you bought it yet?