Die Weihe des Eises - Eine Grossweise

Despite being two years in the making, ‘Die Weihe des Eises - Eine Grossweise’ is a continuation of ‘Dystopias Wiege’ but portrayed on a grander scale since in which the band try to garner the same spirit of the debut, but expand upon it with style. Klage have become more infamous in the short space of time between this and the debut record, which is to be expected since the growth of the depressive scene has been unexpectedly fast and free flowing. I have to admit, I’m disappointed in this effort and in the bands leading member. I had hoped Klage would knuckle down and do some real work towards perfecting the positive aspects and rid the sound of its negative personality traits. This hasn’t occurred and the despite being a continuation of the debut, the disappointment in the downhearted listener hangs over them like a cloud ready to distribute the pathetic fallacy that will come in use as we attempt to decipher and describe this disjointed piece. German black metal may be the most notorious, especially in the depressive field, but it isn’t all smiles and sunshine for the listener because there is a side to this scene that the fan base try to discreetly destroy all traces of.

Records like this prove one point and that is that Klage are only capable of portraying one sound - they’re one dimensional. They follow in the footsteps of acts that have already covered this style to death. A representative of some of the material would be Darkthrone’s ‘Transilvanian Hunger’, which is a record comparable to the debut too, which highlights the issues with innovation, or a lack there of. Although a lot of bands these days like to cover the old school sound, they do it with a sense of style and how to incorporate their own essential elements, Klage do not. Repetition and distortion is all we have, for the most part. Although one dimensional sounds may work (see Bolt Thrower), the band has to appeal to a niche market in order to maintain their success as they walk along a pre-determined trail which they have set for themselves many years previous. Klage are, at this stage, young babies. Although they can’t walk, they’re attempting to roll over and perhaps show signs of beginning to understand how crawling works. One might even say the band tried to run before they could crawl on the debut, too. The depressive market was at its most imperative stage when Klage came along. Bands like Anti and Nyktalgia, both German bands, were spreading the message that the Germans knew something that most other nations didn’t and that was how to perform this disparaged style with some sort of creativity that didn’t come across as stale, or too pretentious.

Unfortunately, both of those traits can be applied to this attempt at consoling the bands firm position within the field. The twenty-minute-plus epic, which is also the self-titled track, is adventurous, but totally lacking in stimulants. The listener is bound to grow tired of this largely repetitious sound over such a long period of time, making the record instantly inaccessible to large portions of the audience - a ploy on the part of the band that has been grossly misused and mistreated. Long epics need to draw on the best qualities of your bands style and whilst Klage do reminisce about the old days, with prolonged periods of ambivalent ambiance alongside emotionally reflective guitar leads, the band doesn’t have the right aims, or direction in order to be seen as accessible to all ranges of black metal fans, or even on a wider scale. The problems with the production still exist - that unadventurous and uninspiring low-fi fuzz doesn’t caress the atmospheres with loving and warm hugs, it crushes the atmospheres with predictably annoying restrictions. Though melodies might flow well through the pivotal guitars, such as on ‘Verlöre Sich Nur Dieses Enden’ which reminds me of battles between Vikings and splendiferous soundscapes stained with the blood of passionate fighting, the production still manages to restrict the level of audaciousness in the atmospherics, which punch above their weight.

There certainly is a lot more variation, as there needs to be with a much longer song present here, but this only exists in the form of the raging guitars, which provide both distortion and melody throughout each of the epics. The percussion, like the production, is restrictive and restricted by one another. These elements clash like two rival gangs, throwing punches at anything that moves. Its no understatement to say that they don’t compliment each other in the slightest. The percussion is generally repetitive and still sounds like a drum machine a-la Abyssic Hate (but worse). The bass is drowned out more so now than ever before, though when it does become available to the listener, it throws a nice spin on the repetition, providing us with a much slicker sound than before. As expected, the vocals are also much the same, which really does make me wonder how the next full-length will turn out. I predict it might offer more of the same, which is a shame as Klage will begin to become more inaccessible to me as long as they persist with this sound. Its not the worst effort in a scene that is called dour, but it isn’t stunning, like Nyktalgia’s debut, for example.