Fleischwald

What to do with this oddity of an album? Much like a modern-art painting (you know, one of the ones with splatters of various fleshy colours and extrusions of unidentifiable medium or origin scattered all across the canvas – if that really is canvas under there), I can certainly understand how TotenmonD would have an incredibly limited range of appeal. Yet, for some reason, here they are, in my music library. And I sit here, listening in profound awe to the massive, disparate sounds on Fleischwald, in much the same way Alan Ruck gazed transfixed at Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte at the art museum in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . Even as I write this review, it is still difficult to wrap my brain around the music from the first feedback-riddled twang on Pazzer’s guitar in ‘Kadavernazion’ to the minimalistic pounding and creepy beat poetry of ‘Rauhbau’, even though it continues to transmit signals from my ears down to my typing fingers and telling me that this music is actually pretty fucking enjoyable on a brute-force gut level. To say it is ‘progressive death metal with punk influences’ as the site description has it is technically correct, but sadly deficient, and to say that the music is simply indescribable or a style all TotenmonD’s own would be a complete cop-out in an Encyclopaedia Metallum review, so naturally I’ll give it me best shot.

First off, I should say that ‘subtlety’ is in not exactly TotenmonD’s all-German lexicon here. The sound is unpolished, raw, even basic, and yet the downtuned, distorted guitars and drums bear down on you with all the force and inevitability of an oncoming 20,000-tonne freight train, and that’s really all they play with. Whether it’s doomy falling chord progressions at a trudging tempo (‘Tod und Niedergang’, ‘Fleischwald’) or an all-out crossover-thrash / crust frenzy with Pazzer frantically belting out his cryptic lyrics from atop this unstoppable piece of heavy and destructive machinery (often both in the same song, as in ‘Kadavernazion’), you can only hope to slow it to a crawl and even then it will still take you under, with chilling exactness and unshakeable determination (while Pazzer screams ‘Amen’ repeatedly as the machine grinds to a halt before going off in another direction). To say the music is disjointed and often jarring would be a massive exercise in understatement, but at the same time there is definite direction to it (so if you want to say it is ‘progressive’ you would be technically correct).

At the same time, some songs just ‘click’ right away. The thrashy hardcore (at least to begin with, before it transitions into a gloomy groove and back) number ‘Dekadenz ‘98’ is a perfect example. Every part of it makes perfect sense (musically, anyway) and it is a true, crusty headbanger. Same with ‘Das Beil und der Vater’ and ‘Das saure Kraut’ (belch and all!): aggressive, fast, groovy, straightforward, primed for slaying on a mass scale… at least until the extensive doomy sections which slow the killer riffs down to nearly a dead crawl. To my own tastes, these songs do stick out as definite highlights in the album. As a counterpoint, ‘Der Misanthrop’ is much more straightforward death metal, which seems like a rather funny and contrarian way to cover a well-known German punk band (but apparently TotenmonD love them some punk covers, to judge from the composition of Auf dem Mond ein Feuer). And yeah, then there’s ‘Rauhbau’. Six and a half minutes of minimalistic pounding and creepy beat poetry pretty much covers it.

As noted above, the sound here is incredibly raw and basic: guitars, bass, drums and one pissed-off Jerry death-metal roar. All of them wielded like a blunt instrument to the back of the head. They get the job done; you shouldn’t really be demanding any fancy mixing or effects from this beast. The lyrics are all in German, which oughtn’t to be too much of a turnoff if you’re afraid of not understanding them; from what little I gathered with my incredibly rusty high-school German, they don’t really make all that much sense in the original, either.

So… yeah. Not the easiest listen in my library by any stretch of the imagination, and not exactly written with the average metalhead in mind (insofar as there is such a thing as an ‘average metalhead’, that is). But not exactly a sawblade up the arse, either. Despite its disjointed queerness, this album still has a certain charm, to be recommended with some qualifications. Not bad for three self-described pissed-off Swabian teenagers with a drinking problem; not bad at all.

15 / 20

Punk / Hardcore / Crustcore, Doom Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Black Metal, Grindcore. All these styles have been used to describe Totenmond's music, but the only explanation for the Black Metal comparisons that I can see is the drum work on the opener "Öfter mal ins Blaue" (and the end of "Panzerdampf") on their following album "Reich in Rost". Other than that, there are no signs of Black Metal and especially Thrash Metal or Grindcore whatsoever anywhere.

What's left are the styles that are really a part of their sound: Hard-, or rather, Crustcore, Doom Metal, Death Metal (Obituary come to mind) and the two bands that really influenced them and that Totenmond are always compared to: Carnivore and Eisenvater. As a result, I think I have finally found the best possible description of their style with "Industrial Death/Doomcore" and this album is just as massive as this description may suggest!

After a pretty long intro and a crusty beginning, (the rest of) "Kadavernazion" and "Leichen der Liebe" show Totenmond's Industrial influences with their rather minimalist construction and the machine-like beats. "Tod und Niedergang" is a Death/Doomer that even Winter would have been proud of and the title track is basically a mixture of all that.

The emphasis on "Fleischwald" is a bit more on Hardcore/Crustcore, which is also displayed by rest of the album, i.e. "Dekadenz '98", "Treibjagd", the brilliant Narsaak cover "Der Misanthrop" and "Das Beil und der Vater" are pretty much pure Crust.

"Das saure Kraut" also starts like a Crust song and its construction is very similar to the aforementioned "Kadavernazion", yet this song doesn't have the Industrial vibes of the latter, because it ends very doomy and for the break they shamelessly used (with slight variations though) the break of their "hit" "Sagenwelt" from the "Lichtbringer" album!

If I had to chose the 3 best Doomcore (in its widest sense) albums of all time, it would be Crowbar's eponymous album, Type O Negative's "Slow, Deep And Hard" and Totenmond's "Fleischwald" or its follow-up "Reich in Rost", which is even a bit more extreme, but not nearly as well produced, as "Fleischwald" remains Totenmond's (by far) best produced album (I love the snare drum sound, by the way).

This is a strange thing though, because it is only their second release and you should suppose that the production quality increases from album to album. I discovered that "anomaly" when writing the Crowbar review, because they have exactly the same problem (their best produced album even was also the second one).

Finally I'd like to mention the cryptic lyrics that add greatly to the intensity of Totenmond's music. (Don't panic, if you don't understand them, because even if you spoke German, you would probably not understand them either...)

Totenmond combine a few of the most extreme forms of music to create a ruthless and bleak sound and "Fleischwald" is a perfect demonstration of that. Besides "Reich in Rost" this is not only their best (and best produced) album, but one of the best Doomcore releases of all time. Masterpiece!