All You Need Is Love

Die Apokalyptischen Reiter's All You Need Is Love is a proof that you can play extreme metal music with all the growling, screaming, blast beats and heavily distorted riffs and still sound fun and catchy but without losing what defines these genres (including the lyrics). You can be sure that it will be so hard to find another band that can do that. This album will bring you lots of fun and at the same time you will feel the wrath and darkness that is involved.

Unlike its two predecessors: "Soft & Stronger" and "Allegro Barbaro", this album accomplishes completely the goal of doing all what I stated on the first paragraph and also have a killer production and outstandig lyrics and even better given that they're written in two languages (German and English). Besides "Reitermania" is written in four languages: German, Russian, English and Finnish. Another improvement is that there's even more variety of genres on this album than on the past two. Mainly it's based on death and black (melodic), but you can hear also doom, heavy, and folk metal.

The instrumentation is perfect, these guys are all very talented and it makes me angry that still, this band is underrated as hell. The extremely heavy riffs are unique and melodic as well as the guitar solos (the solo on "Unter der Asche" is one of the best I ever heard on melodic death or black metal), they're excellent on every song. The bass is not overlooked, it sounds so fucking deep and mixes perfectly with the guitars, there's a bass solo on the song "Erhelle meine Seele" (Illuminate my soul), pretty awesome too. The drums without doubts are really amazing, sometimes they're extremely fast, sometimes slower, but always maintaining an splendid rhythm, they adapt to the genre changes: death, black, doom, heavy. Finally the keyboards add the the icing on the cake, this is what makes the album so dark and melodic, sometimes just the keyboards, sometimes piano and obviously the accordion for the song "Reitermania", this guy Dr. Pest is very talented.

Now, it's time to talk about the vocals and the lyrics. Here is important to say that the drummer and screamer "Skelleton" is no longer in the band, and since this point the bass player "Volk-Man" took his place as screamer, and did a great job. Thanks to him the black metal part of the album is magnificent, but you must not discredit Fuchs, who does the growls, and clean vocals, and he's the main singer of the album. It's pretty awesome noticing that all the types of vocals are perfectly performed, the very deep growls and less deep (more like John Tardy type), the clean vocals (less frequent but perfectly sung) and Volk-Man's sharp screams complete what it is a perfect singing for a metal album. Now the lyrics: Fuchs and Volk-Man did a very good job here as well, they sing about hope, sadness, hate, death, remorse, and heavy metal! Here's a fragment of "Reitermania": "standing together side by side, ready for the final battle, only together we are strong, in the name of heavy metal!" I really love that fragment.

Finally I will remind you that this album will like you a lot, there's no doubt about it. If you want to listen to something really crazy and different, this album is clearly an excellent option for you. In my opinion this album deserves 100%, no arguments about that. The "must-hear" songs: basically the entire album, but the bests are: "Licked by the Tongues of Pride", "Unter der Asche", "Erhelle meine Seele", "Gone", "Reitermania", "Geopfert", "Die Schönheit der Sklaverei" and "...Vom Ende der Welt" (Instrumental). Notice that I mentioned 8 from the 12 songs.

It's like a party platter of metal. A smorgasbord of extreme music. It’s slightly zany, yet profoundly emotional. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry ... yes, it’s Die Apokalyptishen Reiter.

Many bands try to assemble a sound through piecing together various genres making for a very forced, uninteresting end result that can’t break away from clichés anyway. D.A.R. manage to forge together dozens of styles and make it feel natural.

Baroque harpsichord (Unter Der Ashe) , dramatic piano (Gone), accordion (Reitermania), harp interludes (Peace of Mind), somber folk (Rausch) ... there’s a lot of instrumentation to be found here. And even more styles.

Eerie keyboard backdrops, drumming that exploits leanings from every spot on the metal spectrum, with great vocals that do the same. The calm folky singing, the high harsh black metal screams, the punishing death roars, all here, and all high quality. The guitar riffs are always superb, and really defy classification. And what of the bass? Thick and powerful - yes, it's actually audible. The guitar and bass sound spot on; in songs like Unter Der Ashe, Hate, and Geopfert they combine to create a blast that is in two words: fucking heavy.

So wonderfully heavy.

The band is even so bold as to use a heavy dose of piano against blasts and those intensely distorted, crushingly heavy guitars. And they make it work. This is displayed in Gone, Die Schonheit Der Sklaverei and Geopfert. And the piano sections waltz gracefully beside the crushing guitars.

Geopfert is a perfect example of this band’s indescribability. A piano part that borders on something from a horror movie, mixed with extreme melodic Halloween death metal. It’s just ... too unique to describe.

That's something special I really appreciate in a band. Not being able to tack them down to a genre; that takes a keen effort on their part. Or better yet, it might just come naturally. All the components converge into something that can be recognized by no other name than Die Apokalyptishen Reiter.

Die Apokalyptischen Reiter are one of metal's stranger bands, not because they want or try to be (Unexpect), but because they play a mesh of styles that seems at first incompatible. Things are kicked off with "Licked by the Tongues of Pride", which is basically a black/death number - until a minute in, when the synths make their presence known and a slower doom vibe is established. There's a lot of that here: seamless (truthfully, you won't always notice) transitions from one style to another, or combinations of more than one style. Death and black metal lay the foundation, but you've also got a lot of upfront keyboard and piano playing that would probably not go over well with purists of either genre, despite how tastefully they are utilized. There are hints of traditional metal throughout as well, mainly in the use of intermittent clean vocals and guitar riffs that don't quite fit into the extreme metal spectrum. The band's advertised folk aspect is overstated, considering everything is done sans folk instruments (compositional influences, instead), but it does play a part in rounding out their unique formula. A hard rock-oriented sound would manifest itself later in DAR's career, particularly on Samurai, but there's little to none of that here.

The production is great, with breathing room for every instrument and no glaring flaws in volume. It may not please those looking for either minimalism or the absolute extremity of some death metal, but in traveling the middle of the road as far as production values go, DAR were able to fully showcase their songwriting talents. All You Need Is Love often conveys feelings of tragedy and perdition, similar to the focus of many death/doom metal bands, but without slowing the tempo to a crawl. Speed (or lack of) is used as a tool to get where they're going, not as an end in itself. The same can be said for the album in general; although it has a lot of cool riffs, lead guitar melodies, vocal melodies etc, it's clear that DAR are all about creating a final product, one which attempts to transcend individual instruments. I believe they did that with this release, striking a near perfect chord between the basic ambitions of metal and its more adventurous side, endeavoring to invoke emotions and imagery and all that good stuff.

There's so much I could say about All You Need Is Love, but no word count can do it real justice. If you're at all interested, or if you just want to hear something that hasn't been done before, track this album down.

Before “All You Need Is Love” came out Die Apokalyptischen Reiter (the four horsemen of the Apocalypse) had already built up a fanbase with their first two albums and fantastic live performances. However they were still an underground band in 2000. That totally changed with the release of this album, as this was nothing less than a sensation in Europe, and for good reason.

Although this album is a mixture of Death, Black, Folk and Heavy Metal elements and there’s a constant switching between those styles, this is actually one of the catchiest extreme metal albums ever released. Songs like “Licked By The Tongues Of Pride”, “Erhelle Meine Seele”, “Reitermania” (with lyrics in German, English, Russian and Finnish) or “Unter Der Asche” are addictive upon first listen, while the killer production of Andy Classen does the rest.

After listening to this I was sure that these guys would never be able to release an equally great follow-up. Well, I was in for a real surprise…