Weiland

The initial loadstone for foundational black metal was an explicit exercise in self-limitation. Cut the fat away from metal as it was becoming by the late 1980s, the meaty production, the excessive riffs, the complex and the bouncy rhythms and what are you left with? Obviously this ascetic quest was quickly jettisoned by the turn of the century in favour of high drama and ever more lavish orchestration.

But history often runs into barriers, and movements will mutate or shatter in the smashing of said barriers. The fragments that emerge from such collisions often bear noteworthy fruit of their own. The binding of black metal sensibilities with northern European folk traditions was one such fragment. Before the popular iterations of the modern neofolk movement gained traction, acts like Tenhi and Empyrium were exploring a more austere, stripped down, and ultimately rawer iteration of folk. This followed in the wake of the self-limiting ethos – acoustic instruments, intimate production values, sparce soundscapes – but sought an entirely different way to present these sonic values when compared to extreme metal’s latent aggression.

Empyrium’s journey to this monastic offering made to a largely metal audience was not straightforward. Having started out as a folky black metal act, their second LP ‘Songs of Moors & Misty Fields’ (1997) has gone down as a classic of folk metal. But their onward trajectory into Germanic folk proper came as little surprise. And by the release of ‘Wieland’ (2002) they had consigned the amps and distortion pedals to the storage locker, and reached for the acoustic guitars. The backbone of this sound is a series of gentle arpeggios plucked out on acoustic guitars, meandering in their progressions, much like a careless wanderer through woodlands. The black metal roots of this music still make themselves known, as with the track ‘Fortgang’ that sees black metal tremolo riffs picked out on acoustic guitars, replete with the requisite distorted vocals to complete the package.

But the majority of this album is tranquil, sombre, mournful. It sits right in the tradition of Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ and the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Flutes, strings, a rock drum kit, and a very occasional wind sample all make an appearance. But the presentation of the album is undeniably sparce, making use of silence as much as instrumentation to convey the playful hostility of the Germanic countryside. The drums largely stick with rock patterns, but this says more about the influence of folk as a rhythmic underpinning for a pop hook than it does of vestigial rock elements within this album. And indeed, if it wasn’t for the sheer drabness of Empyrium’s presentation, many of these pieces might seem positively danceable. But the stop/start approach to momentum – flowing from stolen joy to unbridled sorrow – cuts down any notion that this music is anything other than a series of laments.

Vocals, when not veering into black metal territory, stick with clean, emotive crooning. An uncharitable reading of this style would call it quaint. It is straight out of another era, a time of dramatic poetry readings, tragic authors, and congenitally ill Germanic composers. This style, set to the simple yet elegant guitar lines, feels so out of time and place precisely because it juxtaposes so dramatically with the majority of contemporary music the average Western music fan is likely to encounter. This is an archaic form of expression, ill-suited to modernity’s insatiable demand for urgent and rageful outbursts.

But this understated and naïve delivery is precisely what makes the Empyrium formula work so well. This music is not short on emotion and drama. But the subtle and relaxed delivery stands in defiance of modern excesses at one end, and cuts to the quick when it comes to sincerity. A sincerity that many modern artists shoot for yet struggle to find. Empyrium’s delivery may well come across as quaint, a little childlike, but it is in this very emotional rawness that we find new (or rather the old given new context) avenues of expressing the human condition, our sorrows, our joys, our restless relationship with the reality that confronts us every day.

Originally published at Hate Meditations

It is a complete mystery to me as to why Empyrium, or particularly this album, is not reviewed more often on MA. Although, it might have something to do with the fact that they released their last real album in 2002 and disbanded soon after. The thought that many people probably missed out on the brilliance that is Empyrium saddens me. Empyrium has been one of my fallback bands ever since I learned about them in 2000, two years before the “Weiland” album was released. I was then confronted with the back-catalogue of Empyrium and it has kept me in its grasp ever since. Never before had I heard a band with such a distinct sound, a sound which changed with every album but always remained Empyrium at the heart. To me, Empyrium is a really special band, that is why I am really excited to hear they have reunited to record new material. But let us not get carried away just yet, this review is certainly not about the band as a whole, or whatever they may or may not produce in the future, it is about “Weiland”.

“Weiland” is the last album that Empyrium released before disbanding, it is a convincingly acoustic album. Instruments which appear on the album, besides the obvious drums and bass guitar, are the acoustic guitar, piano, violin, cello, western concert flute and the bassoon. This makes for a very natural, smooth, slow-paced and easy-listening experience throughout most of the album. This might make you wonder, why is this album even on MA? Is it even metal? Well, for the most part it is not. The only real links this album still has with metal are the occasional black metal-inspired shrieks which emerge shortly on tracks like “Fortgang”, “Waldpoesie” and “Die Schwäne im Schilf” to provide contrast with the otherwise very natural sound. Markus Stock furthermore is responsible for the general singing vocals and whispers on this album which are contrasted by some amazingly performed operatic vocals from band mate Helm, who also happens to be the main force behind the piano.

This album takes heavy cues from the neofolk genre in the sense that it manages to convey a lot of emotions with relatively few and modest use of instrumentation. In short we can say Empyrium continued their neofolk inspired sound which they started to develop on their previous album ”Where at Night the Wood Grouse Plays”. Not a big surprise since the writing of “Weiland” followed just after the completion of that album. The lyrics on this album are all in German, which was a most likely a deliberate choice by Markus to better express himself. Contrary to what one might expect they are not distracting at all – in fact I find them very intriguing. My first language is closely related to German so it is quite easy for me to understand the lyrics and appreciate them.

The album manages to paint pictures in my mind’s eye, it summons visions of nature landscapes, moorland, meadows, rivers, creeks, snow-covered pine forests and mountain peaks. This is exactly what Markus Stock intended, in the booklet of the Empyrium retrospective boxset Markus Stock explains that he has always associated certain instruments with natural phenomena. The sound of a piano, particularly in the higher registers he says, he associates with water. Flutes resemble the atmosphere of heath to him, while dark plucked guitars represent undergrowth. It is exactly this that helped him to shape this album. The album consists of three chapters, track 1 through 6 are Heidestimmung (“Moor Sounds”), track 7 is Waldpoesie (“Forest Poetry”) and track 8 through 12 is Wassergeister (“Water Spirits”). Chapter one is characterized by the use of drums and acoustic guitar, chapter two is more of a mixture of all instruments found on this album except for the piano, whereas the final chapter is then fully taken over by the piano in combination with the violin and cello. Very impressive.

“Weiland”, or Empyrium for that matter, is music that I can listen to at any time, be it winter or summer, day or night. Like I mentioned before it has been a band on which I can fall back at any time. The music never lets me down, it always has the same impact on me each time I listen to it. I do not know if this album will have the same impact on you, it relies heavily on personal taste. Seeing, however, that you are reading this review on a metal website there is a tiny chance that you may be interested in neofolk-inspired music, but if this review has peaked even a slight interest for you I strongly advise you to check this album out. Perhaps even start with their back-catalogue if you would rather hear their doom-inspired metal roots first. Closing this review I would like to take a look at the future, what can Empyrium possibly bring after this masterpiece? It seems impossible to come up with something better. I personally believe that Markus Stock would not have revived Empyrium unless he had a grand vision for a new album, so all we can do for now is wait impatiently for the next chapter in this book. I hope it will not disappoint.