Melancholie²

There are very few albums on this planet that make me feel depressed and utterly miserable, certain albums can convey certain emotions within me that are comforting whenever I’m feeling utterly depressed or stressed out. I gravitate toward those types of albums a lot and have a sentimental and emotional attachment to them. DSBM seems to be a breeding ground for those types of albums. And This album is one of them, one of the most depressing, beautiful things I’ve ever listened to. And for that, it’s one of the big reasons why DSBM is my favorite sub-genre of black metal.

This isn’t your typical DSBM album, most DSBM albums are very straightforward with their approach, simplistic depressive riffs, drum beats, and your usual sad shrieks. So many bands use and copy that same formula to the point of it being overused. This album, while it has similar characteristics, has multiple layers and dynamics. The ambiance is very prominent here, playing beautifully with the violin sections, creating this ethereal yet dismal feeling as you progress on through the album. There’s nothing hopeful about this record, it’s misery the whole 50 min run span. Song structure and songwriting wise is somewhat simplistic but VERY potent and executed perfectly, the instruments and vocals flow so well with the ambient pieces, giving an orchestric vibe in some aspects. It’s a breathtaking experience, to say the least.

The album is broken up into interludes, which are just as awesome as the actual songs themselves, “Stille” being my favorite of these interludes. Even though it’s very short and over-repetitive, it doesn't bother me or take away from the experience. It’s one simple guitar part, played over and over again, with some ambiance in the background. Yet that’s what I love about it, it’s a simple yet elegant and gorgeous track.

Now let’s get the obvious magnum opus of a song out of the way, “Tortured By Solitude”. Holy fucking shit, what a masterpiece of a song. Beginning with one of the most beautiful violin performances I’ve ever heard, with the guitars and drums kicking in shortly after. While the riffs and drums follow a simplistic beat, it packs a heavy punch. The ambiance that soon follows layers these instruments making them more lush and complex, making them sound so perfect. It gets even better as the main violin intro gets brought back by the end of the song, instead of being isolated. I could listen to this song millions of times in a row and not be bored once. The emotions I feel from this song are unmatched, making this song nostalgic to me. It’s easily the best song on the album.

Other songs on this album are just as good and convey similar emotions. The opening track “Dream of a Dead Sun”, the track “Red Snow”, “Hymn to Eternal Frost” and the rest of the songs, to me, convey a story of someone eventually resorting to suicide. The production here is everything I want from a black metal album, raw and gritty. The vocals sound absolutely fantastic on here as well, adding to the already destructive, miserable atmosphere.

The closing track “Escape” is everything I love about this album shoved into a 7-minute instrumental. It begins with a simple synthesizer/ ambient part, as it slowly continues to build upon it, adding more instruments as the track goes on. The drums are then slowly introduced, and only then are you greeted with the best part of the song. The violin section. A very gorgeous melody that plays for a good portion of the song, before most of the instruments cut out, then all of them are brought back for this grandiose, orchestric ending before each instrument slowly fades out. One after another.

Everything about this album works so perfectly, not once did I feel like something could’ve been added or cut off, or a section was over the top cringe that it took me out of the listening experience. All of the songs are different from each other and don’t mesh together, making them all standouts. This album is easily one of my favorite black metal albums and one of my favorite albums in general. This is an album truly worthy of a perfect rating.

This is one of those albums I always recommend to people unfamiliar with black metal because I feel it's an accessible record for those not acquainted with black metal yet, particularly the track "Tortured by Solitude", which is the most accessible of the bunch. The aggression commonly found in black metal is mostly absent here in favor of more beautiful and atmospheric soundscapes, and it works great. ColdWorld and this album are truly something else. I've been trying to find similar music for quite a while to no avail.

Melancholie² is packed with atmospheric, cold vibes. It mixes soft, ambient-style keyboards with harsh, tremolo-picked guitar riffs, and it works better than one would expect. This certainly isn't something many would call "trve" black metal but rather a quite unique style. The keyboards are quite dominant throughout the album, but they're fundamental to the sound album is going for and thus never feel out of place or intrusive. They're the #1 reason why this album has such a unique sound. The guitars often take a backseat to the synth melodies.

The variety on the tracks of this album is commendable. They're all coherent and feel like they belong on the album, but they all have something different to offer. The ironically titled "Tortured by Solitude" is, musically, quite an optimistic and catchy track while "Red Snow" is something that could almost pass for a depressive black metal track. "Stille" is a minimalistic and melancholic track that only features a synth pad and guitar. "Hymn to Eternal Frost", on the other hand, is a majestic, epic track that has a very catchy chorus melody. They're all very different yet fit together and form a coherent whole.

One thing about this album that I don't particularly care for are the vocals. It sounds like they're there just for the sake of it rather than as an integral element that actually provides something crucial to the music. They're more like a distant whisper than your typical black metal growl. Think Burzum's Dunkelheit, and you get the picture. They're not necessarily bad, though, just insignificant.

But overall, I don't have many bad things to say about this album. It's definitely one of the best black metal albums that I've ever heard. ColdWorld may be a silly band name, but the music isn't one bit silly; it's amazing.

I'll get my grand declarations out of the way first. Melancholie² is probably the prettiest black metal album ever made. If not that, it' at least the prettiest one I've heard. I came across the work of Georg Börner and his project ColdWorld around the time this debut came out in 2008. I'd been searching for new depressive black metal to match a fittingly tenuous stage in my life. "My Dead Bride" was the first ColdWorld song I ever heard, and I can think of few times where a band's been able to leave such an impression on me with less than three minutes of music.

Having been listening to this album for almost a decade now, I can understand the detractors' criticisms of Melancholie². It's admittedly hyperbolic in its sentimentality, and despite its lo-fi fuzz there's an all-too clean sense of refinement in the way the material is executed. But with all that said, recognizing these would-be gripes in the years since hasn't stopped me from seeing it as a near-perfect work of art. Whenever I listen to it, ColdWorld takes me to a very specific place emotionally. I am leagues more embittered when it comes to black metal than I ever was back in 2008, but, like a trusted friend you fall in and out of contact with over the years, there is a warm comfort in hearing Melancholie². It's an album I feel like I've grown with to the point of extreme familiarity. Ironically, that fact makes the album extremely difficult to review.

Brushing aside my personal biases towards Melancholie² for a moment, let's cover the basics. Coldworld had released a promising demo and solid EP before this, but there wasn't special reason to believe that ColdWorld would be coming out with a masterpiece, come the debut. Despite an admittedly silly name ("Melancholy squared? Melancholy to the power of two? Square multiplication ist krieg?") there are precious few atmospheric black metal bands that seem to tap into some well of perfection. Whether you love or shrug off ColdWorld, "perfection" is hopefully a word we can all agree on, although we may take the term for different meanings. A seemingly raw, lo-fi blanket covers the sound-- the likes of which you've heard in a thousand other one-man BM projects. On Melancholie² however, listening to it the album intently enough, it doesn't have that cloudy murk of usual raw black metal. Hell, it doesn't even feel raw to me. It's as lo-fi as anything else, to be sure, but it sounds like Georg Börner has gone the extra mile towards taking all aspects of the sound under his control.

Some will interpret this move as a mark of dryness. That could not be further from the truth. Putting tight wraps on the sound design would be a call to boredom in lesser hands, but ColdWorld emerged on the scene already under the spell of a master. Burzum is the obvious frontrunner of the atmospheric end of black metal, and off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who rivalled Vikernes in terms of vision and lo-fi magic like this guy. That sounds like lavish praise to be giving to a project with a single album out, and it is, but the warmth isn't without good reason. ColdWorld stands out in virtually every way, in a genre that is notorious for sameness and throwaway acts. If Georg found a perfection in the execution, he mirrored it with his compositions. There's no subtlety in the music's emotional pull, but there doesn't need to be. ColdWorld's bleeding, melodic heart echoes the very best composers from the Romantic-era, where complexity was streamlined in favour of feeling. "Dream of a Dead Sun", "Red Snow" and "My Dead Bride" are meticulously structured and performed, but the resulting atmosphere gives the music all the life it could ever need.

ColdWorld succeeds as a DSBM record, bringing melodies and songwriting tact into a style they're sometimes absent from. "Tortured by Solitude" is one of those atmospheric black metal tracks that feels instantly familiar the first time you hear it, with overwhelming, tragic feelings belying the calculated approach. The archetypal depressive "woe is me" mentality comes through most noticeably on "My Dead Bride" and "Red Snow", but there are parts here that nearly sound cheerful by comparison. If there are any gripes of my own I can spot with Melancholie², it's the cheery break at the end of "Hymn to Eternal Frost". I get that ColdWorld is not a depressive act in the conventional sense, but a build-up that sounds like it's part of some lifeloving gazer band. Coldworld is at its best when the music surrenders to the negativity, trying to find catharsis through it rather than negation.

The pristine exploration of ambient ColdWorld shows on "Winterreise" is another mark of proof that the project can (and should) be compared on favourable grounds with Burzum. Almost everything Melancholie² touches turns to a pristine gold. And if I'm more jaded about it now that I used to be, I still love it as much as I ever have. There are so, so many of these one-man acts that try to do what ColdWorld do, but I don't know of any that come so close to the mark, and especially not on their first try. If I were to guess, I'd say the perfection stems from the fact that Georg Börner is all too happy to be making music the way he wants to, uncompromiing in the face of what people might be searching for in black metal. Turn up all the emotions to 11? Why not. Throw a theremin and electronic beats onto your closer "Escape" and casually push the definition of genre itself? Absolutely. The things that make Coldworld distinct from the rest could be loved or hated dependent on what you're searching for. I know where I stand, at least. An album I've been putting on on-and-off for a significant percentage of my life has got to have something going for it.

Coldworld sonically captures each aspect of winter perfectly. Through it's cold, grim, harsh, desolate and harmonious sounds, the entire album feels like a lifelong journey of traveling through an everlasting snowstorm. The opener "Dream of a Dead Sun" sets the distinctive aura of isolation and hopelessness that is reminiscent of Coldworld's EP "The Stars are Dead Now". As a whole, Coldworld tends to lean closer to the atmospheric realms of black metal rather than it's depressive suicidal black metal counterparts like Silencer and Lifelover. The vocals maintain a good balance and are neither too harsh nor too forced. Furthermore, Coldworld is able to create through a quite minimalist approach, a sound that can fill an auditorium and can be heard miles away while wandering through the woods.

Another personal favourite and highlight on the album is the track "Tortured by Solitude". Although it has a basic 4/4 drum beat and simplistic riffs, the song blew me away emotionally and gave the impression of fading away into nothingness. The eerie and ominous vibe on the closer "Escape" gives the impression of someone inevitably trying to escape to death, however they are soon met with their fate and slowly perish in the cold. This album is a true atmospheric black metal masterpiece that stands alone. While many other artists try to capture an epic sound with an overwhelming amount of harsh and brutal noise, Coldworld do the complete opposite. It always astonishes me how the lone mastermind behind Coldworld, Georg Borner is able to produce such an epic and emotionally driven sound through subtle and minimalistic instrumentation.

Overall, this album really demonstrated how atmospheric and epic of a sound Georg Borner was able to put together. He stands by Scott Conner of Xasthur and Jef Whitehead of Leviathan as being the most innovative, unique and talented one man projects in modern day black metal. Despite this album being Coldworld's only full length release, it will only be a matter of time in my opinion before black metalers experience another majestic and distinct work of art from Georg Borner. In the meantime, Melancholie 2 stands besides Amesoeurs's only album and Lifelover's Konkurs in my opinion, to be the most innovative and enthralling depressive atmospheric black metal albums out there at the moment.

Black metal's formative years showcased rough, lo-fi production in part due to necessity, with recording equipment being expensive and complicated, but also in part due to the aesthetics it lent to the music. Back in 1992, a conference call requires multiple phone calls without accidentally disconnecting oneself from the first call while making the second - sort of a dark art that a lot of people figured out but many more did not. By 2008, cell phones had buttons on their touch screens to make conference calls and recording technology had progressed to the point that nearly anyone could assemble a competent mix and a decent sounding album. Digital production offers highly accessible clarity just as digital phone calls can have some distortion, but the person at the other end will no longer sound like they're shouting from the other end of a cavern. However, if the sound of the cavern is of artistic merit, it is important that your cellular phone gets reception in that cave, that the signal isn't needlessly fuzzed out.

The production of Melancholie² seems both ill-fitting and disingenuous, it doesn't belong to the music, it's just lo-fi and has about as much of a dreadful atmosphere as a boring conference call. The whole damn thing sounds like a conference call, compounded by being on hold for a few minutes while widdly music box tones ping the worst "on-hold" music I have ever heard. Much worse painstaking pinging than the infamous Burzum "prison albums" - what the fuck is this guy's excuse, did he record the album while in a phone booth? Would you like the drums to play a different beat? It'll take a few minutes to get to the next section, we need to get everyone on the same page

The vocals sound phoned in in more way than one, echoing and tinny, weak and not at all captivating. The guitars are tinny and irritating, with plenty of digital noise that is unpleasantly harsh rather than atmospheric. The drums sound awful and do very little for the music. In essence, it's black metal done wrong, a common assessment that could be enhanced by a comparison. Compared to Forgotten Woods first album - the drums there help the music move with varying fills liberally placed at the end of long riffs to give a sense of separation, thunderous tones cracking with each it, while here the drums are a tiny ticking timekeeper with barely any attack. The guitars of FW are crunchy but the tone wasn't overwhelming, they played catchy riffs that could easily be remembered - the guitars here are a fuzzy wall of stagnant tremolo picking that are directionless and don't play anything at all memorable. The vocals of a good black metal band have a certain character and voice that speaks to you, not some tinny screaming buried in the mix that'll make you wish Varg had recorded some vocals over the phone while in prison, just so you know that it would sound better in practice, not in theory. This is a particularly uninteresting and boring breed of bad black metal.

You'd have better luck hearing this type of black metal if you listened to a Burzum cover band on speakerphone with long samples of Hlidskjalf cut in every few minutes.

Georg Börner, the man behind ColdWorld, displayed a good deal of confidence in the emotive power of his full length debut when he decided to title it Melancholie². Unfortunately, he seems to have miscalculated. While on the surface, the album displays lots of sorrow, angst and moodiness, it all feels contrived and unconvincing. Melancholie² feels like having a funeral when no one has died; you’re going through the motions but you’re not sure what for.

Categorically, ColdWorld is best described as depressive post-black metal. The music displays a decent amount of Norwegian influence (especially Burzum), but there are a number of dissonant, dreary passages that recall Xasthur. From post-rock, there are many of moments of icy dreaminess that hint at Sigur Ros and clean guitar leads similar to those of Explosions in the Sky. A number of soundtrack style ambient passages round out ColdWorld’s sound.

These elements are employed in the pursuit of a sorrowful, reflective atmosphere. However, poor execution means that the affect is only achieved at the surface level. While the musicianship is technically sound, it is too austere. The cleanliness of the performance stands in stark contrast to the deep emotions Georg is trying to draw out. The performance has no soul. No energy bursts forth from the guitar, the drums are flat and the synths are especially inundating. Georg is infatuated with these female vocal samples that sound like they were lifted from an Enya album. Only the violin—which is a creative touch on Georg’s part—really draws out any fervor. Another problem is that the vocals are quite poor. Georg has a weak and crackly growl. He tries to shelter it with distortion and reverb, but lipstick can only do so much for a pig.

The closer to metal ColdWorld remains, the better it sounds. “Tortured by Solitude,” which blends post-rock leads, mournful violin and metallic fuzz is actually quite beautiful. “Red Snow” is also fairly effective; it starts in a doomy dirge before peaking in a skyscraping post-rock lead. On the other hand, the more rock or ambient tracks are tortuously dull. “Escape” is the worst culprit, employing disjointed electronic percussion and lulling lead guitar over for eight excruciating minutes. Unfortunately, this sort of sleep-inducing drivel makes up about one-third of the album.

At its best, Melancholie² is like a good Hollywood drama. Even though it’s synthetic and follows a predictable storyline, it still manages to pull at your heart strings, albeit in a mechanical fashion. At its worst, Melancholie² is like a daytime soap opera; it’s full of unbelievable melodrama, unconvincing emotions and plastic execution. In both cases, ColdWorld fails to stir anything beyond the most shallow of emotions.

(Originally written for http://deinos-logos.blogspot.com/)

Titles like "Tortured by Solitude", "Hymn to Eternal Frost" and "My Dead Bride" suggest that this album, the first for German act ColdWorld, should be a pretty dreary and sombre affair with hints of deeply buried anger and frustration, like many other recordings blessed (or maybe cursed) with the "depressive black metal" label. First track "Dream of a Dead Sun' adheres quite closely to the broad template of depressive BM: at once solemn and melancholy yet brimming with hostility and potential malice thanks to a strong noisy barrage of BM guitars, efficient no-nonsense percussion and grim croaking BM vocals from ColdWorld man GB who handles just about everything here. There are hints though in the background voices and light synthesiser touches to demonstrate that ColdWorld is not merely any old depressive BM act and that GB has more, much more, to offer to this music.

Progress through the next few tracks and we're treated to violin melodies, definite melodic guitar riffs and passages of keyboard-generated tunes and clouds of pure tone, all of which show that GB has a definite pop sensibility, an easy familiarity with creating and sustaining a particular mood or atmosphere, deft songwriting skills and much knowledge of music genres and techniques outside BM and, indeed, metal generally. It would be no surprise if we were to find that he's worked or is working in some other area of music under another name and achieving some success there. Indeed the danger with this album is that the music, whether it's straight-out repetitive minimal BM, ambient tone poems or a BM fusion with blues, electronica or elements of German Romanticism, seems almost "made to order", it's all just a little too consistent and well-crafted. Everything is perfect and spontaneity is in short supply. You want constant showers of BM guitar noise balanced equally with plaintive pure keyboard tones heavy with existential pain? Check ("Red Snow", "Tortured by Solitude"). Want a nice all-ambient mood piece that tugs at the heart-strings and makes you feel sad that life is often so hard to endure? Check ("Winterreise"). Did you want fries with that? Did you say you want large fries? You get the idea.

In a recording where every song is created with a lot of care and attention to detail, not much being left to chance, there's no filler apart from the superfluous "Stille" which rubs in the tail-end of "Red Snow" but nothing really jumps out and grabs you by the throat either. Everything goes very smoothly and, for depressive BM, a little briskly. All very efficient and tasteful too. Later tracks like "Hymn to Eternal Frost" and "My Dead Bride" veer close to schmaltz in parts where a synthesised choir or orchestra appears. Outro track "Escape" experiments with laidback blues, a spacey sci-fi ambience and very quiet licks of electronica for a while until BM guitars and a solo violin knocks this curious mix aside. Not that I care really because while this is quite an unusual combination, it doesn't sound inspired and there's something about this track that seems calculated. The violin melody seems a bit cliched. Escape? The only "escape" I experience is when the mournful violin playing - gosh, the violin here is always "mournful" - ends and the recording is over.

Cynical and jaded hack writer I may be and while I appreciate music that's well-made and produced, with this kind of BM, I'm looking for music that can express intense feelings and moods for much of the time if not all the time, music that gropes and flounders around in the dark trying to reach the light, music that knows what it's like to feel lost and abandoned in an unfeeling, uncaring world too self-absorbed and busy to know that it's rushing headlong into self-destruction and catastrophe. ColdWorld's music as it is can't yet do this: I feel it's too knowing, it emphasises technical chops too much and it's short on one thing depressive BM must have ... soul.

Having covered another ambient black metal band recently, Totgeburt from Switzerland, it is easy to see why the tides between good and bad are so wide apart when it comes to this sub-genre of black metal which rarely ever homes a band who sits upon the fence directly down the line. Totgeburt were an unusual band, blending ambiance and black metal music in twisted ways in order to provide the listener with a more true to life depiction of the insanity disorder that plagues some of mankind’s most troubled souls. Totgeburt were one side of this sub-genre, unable to maintain interest levels at a high standard throughout the duration of their full-length but this band however, are able to maintain high standards, increased levels of interest and even leave the listener wanting more. Its no secret that Germany’s ColdWorld are considered to be one of the, if not the very best the sub-genre has to offer, mixing black metal traditions with ambiance. Considering the majority of music within this area of metal has some degree of ambiance to it, one would imagine that bands who specialise in the sound would be able to fulfill our every need and want but that isn’t the case most of the time. In actual fact, most bands struggle to get the balance between ambiance and black metal right.

Thankfully, and its probably coming as no surprise nowadays, ColdWorld have managed to successfully mix the two entities together and create a minimalistic haven for black metal fans worldwide. Its no wonder the German scene is viewed as one of the most, if not the strongest scenes on the global market in terms of this genre. The level of success this part of the world has seen is down to their talented array of musicians, especially in the field of depressive black metal (which some argue ColdWorld fit precisely in to - but its difficult to judge without conflict and confusion) where bands like Anti and the supreme artists of Nyktalgia operate their trades. Georg Börner, G.B. as he is usually known as, is the sole creator of this band and, once again, exceeds the expectations of the listener with his one-man act because one man bands have a tarnished reputation within the metal scene. The majority of people recognise the difficulties that one man bands will face when creating their music solely by themselves, despite having the added advantage of not being drawn into debates over musical directions and thus causing unnecessary and unwanted heat between musicians, but this doesn’t stop people from collectively disparaging one man bands, or even neglecting them due to the fact that, apparently, one man cannot control all facets of the instrumentation and be a justifiable success - wrong. G.B. has managed this with much to spare.

His efforts deserve a lot of credit because of the simple fact that he is alone, he is creating this expression by himself, without any help whatsoever. His efforts have rewarded us, the fans, with a fantastic sample of what ambient black metal is all about, the epitome, if one will. I myself know a number of small-time one man successes. Fellow German band Wigrid, for example, despite being a “Burzum clone” and operating with a drum machine, have managed to build up a positive reputation that has taken the underground by storm. I rate his music as one of the best examples of depressive black metal the genre has come up with. His portrayal of pain and sorrow is almost unparalleled within the scene and, until now, bands like Nyktalgia and Wigrid were cruising along with the top down, thinking that they’ll be at the top of the pile forever, but there is always going to be competition from somewhere and with the arrival of this band in 2005, and the debut EP ‘TheStarsAreDeadNow’ in 2006, people began to ignore the material that had been floating around for several years previous to ColdWorld and take notice of the sound coming from the direction of Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany. Whether or not this counts as a depressive black metal record or not is up for debate, but given the possible influences behind the music, it is very likely that we can assume this was intended on being a depressive record, with an ambiance in the background that would spark mass debate and hysteria, as well as experimenting with the sub-genres set roots.

Given the relatively young age of the sub-genre, its still possible for bands, like ColdWorld, to experiment with the roots without running into too much trouble from irate fans. In fact, ColdWorld were greeted with open arms in the midst of their arrival a few years ago. The genre was, or perhaps still is, in the eyes of a small number of people, a major overhaul and ColdWorld were here as our saviour, our saving grace, to provide us with an opportunity of seeing this overused sub-genre in a different context and a new light, which would reflect even more positively against the rest of the pack, whose ideas were running short and energies running on empty as they failed to keep up with this band of juxtaposed ideas. So, once again, it is the case that we have encountered a band whom operates on juxtaposed ideas - ambiance and metal, joy and sadness, positive and negative vibes. G.B. is a compositional mastermind as he stretches the limits of the imagination with his creative and solely ambient pieces, like ‘Escape’, for example, which is a collection of electronic sounds that entrance and a guitar that provides a subtle upbeat message that compliments the previously used negative emotions. ColdWorld are, and I hate to use the word, a genius creation, mixing affluent material with material that conjures an image of desolation and wasted life. I must admit, it wasn’t always a bed of roses as I found it difficult to buy into the hype surrounding the band, despite knowing of their existence for a few years before the debut full-length, ‘Melancholie²’.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with the first EP and couldn’t work myself into the mood for the atmosphere surrounding ‘Melancholie²’, despite being a fan of ambient music, and even trance in my mislead youth. The mix of traditional black metal styling and entrancing ambiance took some time to become accustomed to. I felt a bit overwhelmed in the beginning, but now that the dust has settled, the material has sunk into my blood stream, and is now in full flow on an unstoppable course around my body and into my heart. There are just too many deceivingly delightful elements to be heard. The juxtaposition, once again, plays a significant role in this - harsh rasps, clean, almost operatic vocals from the choir of the dead situated alongside one another during songs like the haunting, yet remarkably beautiful ‘Dream of a Dead Sun’. This song is followed, again, by a song with a fantastic array of emotions, from the sorrowful violin passages (which give a classical vibe to the soundscapes alongside the choir-esque vocals), which were unexpected - making them even better in the mix - alongside the angst ridden guitar and vocal duet. Of course, the biggest and most significant juxtaposed idea is between the ambient and black metal elements, which contain, as always, a Burzum vibe. The pressure is now firmly on G.B. to keep this level of brilliance, or to perhaps even exceed it. I look forward to whatever comes next with excitement.

When it comes to providing an adequate amount of sorrow and beauty within an atmospheric black metal release, which albums usually come to mind? For those who are really familiar with black metal altogether, it wouldn’t be all that complicated to provide a couple of titles right off the top of their heads. But for others, not so many are as quickly recognized, since most black metal bands don’t tend to fall in the same category in which the word “beauty” is present to describe what they have created. Well without a doubt, ColdWorld’s debut Melancholie² should definitely come to mind when one thinks of such beautifully created works from a black metal band.


First of all, Melancholie² can certainly be given the title of one of the greatest offerings to come out of the black metal genre, and not just within recent years, but since many now notably influential acts have been offering their share of impeccable efforts from all periods of this often ridiculed and sometimes misunderstood style of music. Now, what makes an album like Melancholie² that much more appreciative is the fact that such an incredible work of art has been created by only one person. That being Georg Börne (aka G.B.), who’s definitely a cut above the rest and thus can claim a well-deserved place amongst the best-of-the-best of very talented one-man(d) acts who have presented audiences with this type of melancholic sound. At least this can be said based on his efforts made on Melancholie².


ColdWorld’s debut offers, as stated previously, a very enchanting atmosphere that has the ability to place the listener within its created icy isolated domain. This is in part courtesy of a very ‘crisp’ and suitable production, and in the case of this type of release, is very fitting to say the least. Blending together well crafted ambient pieces with mournful sounding black metal (DSBM if you will, but not quite entirely) and even electronic sounds which can be found on the appropriately entitled closing track of “Escape”, makes for a very refreshing and relaxing combination of ingenuity and creativity, in which other bands who have also attempted to combine such aspects within their music have yet to offer as adequately and perfectly as G.B. has with his debut effort. The vocals are very much in the same manner as your typical black metal record that focuses on the more solitary and unnecessary parts of life (again, much as many DSBM bands mainly do) except Melancholie² is simply not as easily placed in the same category of being depressive or suicidal, for the most part. This release is not just limited to its simple percussion courtesy of the programmed drums (which in no way brings down the quality of the music for ever being too dull or repetitive) or the melodies provided by the guitars and keyboards, but also has within its possession string (violin) and choir-like moments that provide an unmistakably uplifting feel to the end result. It would be pretty safe to say that Melancholie² is a whole smorgasbord (not the buffet type) of sweeping emotions, that come together flawlessly and without the unnecessary aspects that can sometimes plague such types of releases.


ColdWorld’s debut is definitely one of the finest examples of the incredible musical abilities that can be found within the black metal community, as well as being a fine example of the talent that one-man bands can offer. Melancholie² not only offers mournfully beautiful ambience it also manages to create the type of unbelievable chill that only a handful of similar artists who stand at the top of the totem poll (the standouts of the scene) have been able to. It’s not all that often that certain musical outfits usually get things right their first time-around, but when they do, the end result usually tends to be in the same manner of marvelously created efforts such as Melancholie².

ColdWorld is the solo project of German musician Georg Börner, a.k.a. GB, and Melancholie² is the debut album, following the release of a limited edition EP, TheStarsAreDeadNow, in 2005. I say German, but ColdWorld is more specifically a Thuringian band, and the central German ‘Bundesland’ or province of Thuringia is a fertile breeding ground for black metal, with notable Thuringian bands including XIV Dark Centuries, Absurd, Heldentum, Farsot, Wolfsmond, Eisregen, Ewigheim and Menhir. ColdWorld’s debut album convincingly demonstrates the band to be a more than worthy addition to these ranks. At the heart of this cold world of frozen desolation burns a secret fire of passion and regeneration.


Melancholie²’s nine tracks occupy 50 minutes, and the album opens with ‘Dream Of A Dead Sun’. Seven lonely, lambent keyboard notes drop into a bleak soundscape with an understated backdrop of orchestral strings, forming a simple repeated phrase. There’s a powerful feeling of vastness and isolation. Then the guitar kicks in with a blazing, surging riff which immediately grabs the attention. You need only to listen to the first few seconds of this song unleashing itself to be left in no doubt that this is a black metal band well worth paying attention to. The anguished, blackened vocals hover on the margins of comprehension, but the lyrics are delivered in English. The song is propelled forward with blastbeat drums, and the energy and velocity of the delivery recalls ‘Reverence’-era Emperor. Keyboards add majesty and atmosphere, but are never allowed to predominate over the guitar, and the production is surprisingly clear and spacious for black metal. ‘Dream Of A Dead Sun’ is an instant classic.


The next track, ‘Tortured By Solitude’, adds yet another element, a mournful violin leading into a bouncy, compulsive riff of detuned guitar which reminds me irrestistibly of Sonic Youth – which sounds bizarre, but check it out and you’ll see what I mean. The last time I heard indie-inflected guitar work like this in a black metal context was on ‘The Claws Of Time’ by Darkthrone, from their underrated Ravishing Grimness album. Anyway, it works tremendously well here - ‘Tortured By Solitude’ is, if anything, even better than the opening track, with violin and keyboards soaring redemptively above the guitar work. The major key used here is unusual for black metal, but Kampfar and Drudkh have both successfully used major keys like this. After the furious Sturm und Drang of ‘Tortured By Solitude’, ‘Winterreise’ (‘Winter Journey’) provides some breathing space, with a slow, minimal ambient keyboard composition very much along the lines of Burzum or Vinterriket, and recalling the album’s opening minute. Whereas Vinterriket produce entire albums sounding like this, though, ‘Winterreise’ is only a brief respite before ‘Schmerzensschreie’ (‘Cries Of Pain’) fades in on a solid barrage of guitar over mid-paced drums, slower than ‘Dream Of A Dead Sun’ but still throwing a blastbeat every now and then – this song is on ColdWorld’s MySpace page at the time of writing. ‘Red Snow’ is, at eight and a half minutes, the longest track on the album, and it possesses a monumental, elegiac quality, filled with a hopeless longing and exquisite bittersweet melancholy, which is so much richer and more emotionally satisfying than the total negation which is all too often the default setting of black metal. ‘Red Snow’ ends with a quiet passage of simple plucked arpeggios. ‘Stille’ (‘Sillence’) is a short but sweet instrumental piece, reprising the previous track’s arpeggios, and layering them over wistful keyboards. Nice enough, but it doesn’t really go anywhere – this is really the only track on the album which is less than totally compelling. ‘Hymn To Eternal Frost’, however, is another triumph, with mid-paced drums and a commanding riff reinforced by violin. Abstract choral notes aspire to the heavens, whilst the remorseless guitar and drums remain locked to the frozen earth, and the violin laments the eternal conflict of dreams and reality. The track fades out on choral vocals. ‘My Dead Bride’ is a quite short and doom-laden track, again using choral harmony vocals in the background. The final track, ‘Escape’, signals yet another innovative departure from the black metal mainstream, introducing static crackle and warm, glitchy electronica and a keening theremin over a trip-hop beat, something like Peccatum. There’s no doubt that a lot of black metal fans will recoil in horror from this wanton experimentalism – ‘tr00’ and ‘kvlt’ it certainly ain’t – and I’ll admit that it’s not my favourite part of the album, but I’m still impressed that ColdWorld have the self-assurance and confidence to show such readiness to take risks on a debut album, and the core tracks of Melancholie² like ‘Dream Of A Dead Sun’, ‘Tortured By Solitude’ and ‘Schmerzensschreie’ are so good that I for one am happy to cut them some slack here.


Melancholie² is one of the best black metal releases of 2008, and ColdWorld’s debut ranks alongside L’Acéphale’s Mord Und Totschlag and Sjenovik’s Jouissance as one of the most interesting debut albums I’ve heard in years, and the best German black metal since the early Bergthron releases. It often seems as if black metal’s glory days are long past and that the genre has become stale, commercialised and formulaic, but every so often, a project like ColdWorld springs out of nowhere to give us all hope. Ah, fresh blood – I love it! Just don’t get them confused with Coldplay…


This review was originally written for Judas Kiss webzine:
www.judaskissmagazine.co.uk