Blutgericht

When talking about black metal, most people think of satanic music, made in the frozen lands of Norway. Composed by frustrated youth and outcasts of society. That time is long gone. Only a few good bands in Norway keep the anti-commercial spirit. For me the main black metal country's are Germany and France. In France we have got the great Deathspell Omega, Antaeus, Mutiilation etc. and from Germany we have got Absurd (and some rip-offs).

This album is the second with a "new style". Previous we had Totenlieder, which is a great album too. Before Totenlieder there were several albums with a more underground/lo-fi sound. I really enjoyed this period of Absurd, but some songs on Werwolfthron were allready boring when I first listened to it. Why? Because all those songs are in the same style and have the same production as Facta Loquntuur. With Totenlieder, I think they made an excellent turn in their style.

Allthough Blutgericht has a lot of aspects from Totenlieder, there is another more folky sound in this album. It has a high sing along value, and some easy to listen songs. I would label this as: Hooligan Black Metal. Blutgericht is some sort of mixture between Black metal and RAC (This is probably the reason a lot of skinheads like Absurd an others). This mixture can be best heard through the vocals, which are not like the typical black metal pitches and also not the typical yelling you hear in RAC. The melodies also have a lot of RAC influences: they are rather simple and the lyrics fit perfectly in to it.

All in all a very good album, buy it when you have the chance, it is definitely worth your money. http://w-t-c.org/, http://www.christhuntproductions.de/, this is where you can find the CD version of the album.

Oh well, here they are, the veeeery infamous and derided Absurd of Germany. I've never thought that it would come a day for me to say that, but these folks are absurdly cheesy on this album. Not that it would be an unforgivable flaw, since in our times a whole genre can be turned to a truck of stinkus cheese (Avantasia and the list goes on, for fans of "pounding" melodic yoghurt).
Absurd's cheesiness consists of a more melo-death (!?) oriented songwriting and riffing style, sometimes interfering with doom, folk or punk. That's the way it goes all across this album. I won't complain about this, if I remember the shit that Absurd poured during their "NS black/punk" period. These riffs are much better written than those in their earlier works (though it sounds more like standard melo-death/folk than goofy punk black; at least "goofy" has a sense of personality, you know). I suppose that there are and will be voices that, unlike mine, would be able to claim that earlier Absurd were geniuses and later Absurd are floating like farts in a diluted melodic atmosphere (oh yeah, did I forget to mention that awesome loud guitar tone?)
I didn't encounter any tensions with the drumming, except those bloated moments when the drummer hits the snare and cymbals while hitting the pedals in a "militaristic" style. That always got me wondering when the fuck would they pull a straightforward rhythm and cut the crap.
But there always has to be an ugly duckling. And that is the vocalist. Does he deserve a bowl of nails to eat. Man, I am aware of the fact that you are sincere and proud, but that's not an excuse for being proud and nationalistic, while spewing out those quacks. Check him out in Totentanzlied Aus Flandern and then bow to such a wonder of a vocal. Daffy is a highly-spirited aesthete compared to him. He sounds like a drunken mallard ready for a relentless guerilla war.
In short, this album is a decent one and has some nice melodies that may catch you from the first listen. Still, it hasn't any melody or song that would detach as a potential classic. It's good for several listens an that's all, but who knows, maybe a fan of this album lies within you.