Atmospheric Black Metal jewel case version by Hammerbund
Coming at the heels of their split with the woefully nonprolific Virvatulet, Germany's one-man black metal project Gratzug have clearly taken even more musical notes from the home of Santa Claus, especially from their splitmates in Virvatulet. A sprawling, ethereal epic, Marter's non-musical elements reek of the tomb but the music is entirely starbound stuff. Swooning, hazy tremolo melodies streak across night skies, the relativistic speeds at which they move tempered by the distance-inducing reverb. Though Gratzug's music lacks some of the polish of bands like, say, Alrakis or Midnight Odyssey, fans of that sort of astral-minded minimalism will likely find a lot to keep their brain tickled in Marter.
After six minutes of nebulous, stardust-sprinkled synth haze intro (provided by none other than A1V of the previously mentioned Alrakis), the band moves into its signature style for the bulk of the album's duration. Whether intentional or a happy accident of mixing, the production used on Marter splits the band's two main modes of expression into two realms of sonics as well. The prettier, atmospheric tremolo bits, formed by multi-tracked guitars playing slow-motion heartstring-yanking melodies interwoven with fuzzy accompanying chords to create a blurry wall of texture, are backed almost exclusively with blastbeats. The speed at which these are played results in a reduction in volume of the individual drum hits, kind of smearing the percussion together with the guitars. The same thing happens to the bass, which speeds up its picking during these plentiful sections to add to the sonic blur. There could very well be keyboards played throughout this whole thing, but if that's the case then they're so expertly woven into the tapestry of the wall of sound that their existence is entirely disputable. Wouldn't shock me, though.
Then, to ensure maximum emotional force is being applied, the band shifts gears to a more punchy, mid-paced groove, with the rhythm section slowing way down and increasing in volume to make their presence more directly felt. In more typical second wave styled black metal, or in any number of other metal styles, it's often these breaks that act as the moments of emotional release in a song, aggression or hatred or despair or triumph finally exploding in a catharsis of headbanging and fist-pumping. For Gratzug, these parts are just another method of wringing sorrow (or is it wonder?) from your heart. In trying so hard to drain all hope from the listener with the endless torrent of melodies, they wind up with buckets full of the stuff themselves.
To top things off, there are some pensive clean electric and acoustic guitar passages that sop up all of the emotional viscera like crusty bread soaking up the last bits of chili at the bottom of the bowl. The segments that lead to and from these bits often take on a decidedly Burzum-ish color, which, despite the playfulness of the melodies that are used so often on this album (and, indeed, in this style of stuff) is without a doubt one of the biggest influences on bands like Gratzug. Those parts are actually a really nice little bit of musical context; fairly often you find people who don't warm up to this sort of stuff writing it off as yet another example of endless Burzum worship in the black metal underground, but seeing the contrast of those snippets against the band's principle techniques shows just how far it's possible for atmospheric black metal to evolve. Yet Gratzug have managed to do so without feeling the need to resort to blending in influences from outside of metal's own borders, as is often attempted by so many atmospheric black metal bands looking to put their own mark on their material.
Note that I'm not misappropriating the word "evolve" in some misguided form of musical "Darwinism" where evolution somehow equates to an improvement of objective quality. No, this is adapting to a musical niche, exhibit #666. While the band's style is highly refined, not everything about the album is wholly praiseworthy. For every two or three really potent riffs or melodies, there's one that just sort of drifts by like a cloud that doesn't really look like much other than a cloud. Not offensive, but just sort of expected and part of the scenery rather than something to draw one's attention. Coupled with the pretty same-y pace used throughout most of the album and the rather limited dynamics, one's attention does start to wander a bit in the second half. I'm not sure Gratzug's style really requires more complex songwriting than what is already here, so I think the solution might simply be to chop the running time down a bit. That was obviously not in the cards, though, as the band's 2014 follow-up, Offenbarung, is over an hour long as well.
Minor quibbles aside, this is still a beautiful album sure to please fans of the band and those who, like me, are entranced by this sort of "watching a midnight meteor shower from a snowy forest glade" kind of black metal.
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