Durch den Traum

Ten years after their formation, Dornenreich’s fifth album is their best yet. The first I heard from this Austrian melodic black metal outfit was 2001’s Her Von Welken Nächten, and 2005’s Hexenwind brought them more attention outside German-speaking territories than they’d previously enjoyed. Still, when their promo CD arrives with a press release in German, and it contains eight untitled tracks, all in German, with no printed lyrics, Dornenreich don’t seem too interested in cultural outreach work.

The band is now the solo project of singer-songwriter Evíga, Dornenreich’s co-founder Valñes having left earlier in 2006, although he contributes guest synth and vocals to this album. Michael Stein guests on drums. Evíga’s press statement indicates that his fondness for grandiose metaphysical concepts is as strong as ever:

“Durch den Traum confronts objective events in nature with the subjective passion and perception of the human being, in order to take it back home into the essence of being, into nature, even more urgently and deeply… Lyrically, it is an existentialist, nature-mystical journey, while musically, it is a vision beyond black metal, (neo-) folk, and ambient.”

Durch den Traum was recorded during the same Sharrketim sessions as Hexenwind, but it’s harder and heavier than its predecessor, although there are still plenty of acoustic elements. The opening track combines whispered vocals with a slow, dirty riff straight out of Filosofem-era Burzum. Track three lays Spanish-style classical guitar over drums and electric guitar to delicate effect. Track seven begins with foreboding piano and ambient percussion, before an anguished scream propels us into the heaviest black metal of the album. The final track again recalls Burzum, specifically the track ‘Gebrechlichkeit’.

As with Her Von Welken Nächten, Durch den Traum contains lengthy passages of whispering, which may be interesting if you understand them, but just cause the album to lose momentum for non-German speakers. Dornenreich’s Natürmystik leanings position them in the same deep-forest territory as Vinterriket or Wyrd, although their work is more guitar-based and less ambient than either of those bands.

Musically, Dornenreich are roughly midway between Empyrium at the acoustic end and Nachtmahr, Helrunar or Bergthron at the black metal end. Your opinions of these bands should help you decide whether you want to enter Dornenreich’s dreamtime.

Austria’s Dornenreich have been somewhat of an enigma within Black Metal since their 1997 debut “Nicht Um Zu Sterben”, with an unorthodox air of experimentation surrounding each of their releases since. At the core of the band’s sound lies the traditional Black Metal approach, but this is almost shrouded by the amount of external influences present within their music. Eviga, the group’s founder and now sole songwriter, explains that “Durch Den Traum”, their fifth album, “represents the essence of Dornenreich’s music both musically and conceptually.”

Most of the material on “Durch Den Traum” was apparently recorded in the same studio sessions as previous full-length effort “Hexenwind” and is a mixture of Black Metal’s intense heaviness, Folk guitar sections and several Ambient passages, which all seem to co-exist very naturally for the album’s duration, especially when they come together effortlessly such as on “V”, where Eviga’s whispered vocals and slow Folk guitar strumming build up to a magnificent crescendo, with harsher Black Metal screams, an understated synthesiser accompaniment and a somewhat melodic but heavy set of guitar riffs. Also, by deliberately leaving the tracks untitled, instead opting to name them simply in numerical chapters, there is an emphasis that the album should be digested as a whole to fully appreciate its structure and depth. This is indeed true; it’s certainly not the sort of album that would necessarily sound exceptional when put into a shuffled play list, instead requiring a patient and careful listener, which does of course lend a slightly more limited appeal to the nature of “Durch Den Traum”.

Nonetheless, where so many groups try to incorporate a multitude of different influences but fail to make a cohesive body of work, Eviga has managed to amalgamate each and every sound on this album to perfection. Simply put, everything sounds that it is meant to be there, whether it is an Ambient build up, an oddly placed anguished scream, mumbled whispering or classical guitar arrangements. You’d be hard pressed to find another album that sounds this natural and unpretentious, especially one with such an ambitious and talented sole composer.

It’s exceptionally difficult to find any faults with this album, as it has evidently been composed somewhat meticulously, with the result that it flows naturally throughout. Full of varied styles, in both the instrument and vocal departments, and with a painstaking attention to detail, “Durch Den Traum” is not going to grab you upon first listen, but given enough listening, will most likely find its way back into your CD player on many occasions. If you’re after a Black Metal album that sounds very much unlike anything that better-known bands are churning out, perhaps more akin to “Filosofem”-era Burzum or early Ulver, you may have found a new hidden gem with Dornenreich. A record for those who like their music a little more challenging than the norm.

Originally written for http://www.blastwave.co.uk