Feuersturm "Apokalypse" CD

Dürer on the cover, "Apocalypse" as the title, no tracklist, but a short list of acknowledgments; two brief snippets of text have to fill the two-page gap between the front and back covers, the presence of which, due to the lack of content, seems rather questionable. Visually, Feuersturm doesn't make a particularly good impression, but what about the music itself?

For just under an hour, the German solo project wallows in a highly idiosyncratic mix of distorted samples (whose underlying mood is mostly heroic in origin) and a sometimes pleasing, sometimes less listenable, cacophony that simply washes over you. It might sound totally cliché, but the
alleged "apocalypse" is simply there, without eliciting any emotional response over any extended period; that's right, you feel neither hatred nor headbang frenetically to the sometimes quite convoluted, almost arbitrary song structure. Even with attentive listening, I could only possibly find fault with the far too low volume of all the instruments, their vacuum-vacuum sound, the lack of genuine ideas (keyword: placeholders), seemingly endless pseudo-epics like "Forgotten and Lost," or some completely misplaced interjections of various kinds. Just thinking about the abruptly ending interlude "Introduction" should make me want to vomit immediately, if, alas, if I didn't couldn't care less about this monstrosity... Given such a clear-cut case, who cares about the occasional moments when this far too drawn-out album seems a tiny bit more bearable...?

Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=mILJmkXnoM8

Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=D6G2QtAUp8E