Sieghetnar / Uruk-Hai "Split CD

Limited to 500 copies. Split album of the two leaders in the Black Metal and Dark Ambient.
Fantasy Depressive Black Metal from Germany vs. great Ambient Black Metal from Austria.
A journey into Transcendental Atmospheric Tolkien themed Ambient Black Metal and Epic Fantasy/Ambient Black Metal in the vein of Summoning! Pairing these two bands was a good idea, as both rely heavily on atmosphere in their music.

Sieghetnar: 83 %
Sieghetnar continues in its good old familiar way: raw slow/mid-paced ambient/symphonic instrumental black metal with a cold, contemplative feel to it. The structure of the songs is, as usual, quite simple but they flow very well and keep the listener's interest up. The first track consists of only guitar and synth, and with a duration of only three minutes, serves more like an intro. "In Spektren des Imaginären Lichts" has a strange fade-out at a bit after four minutes: the metal fades rather abruptly before the keyboard part that ends the track enters. This is the only thing that really disturbs me on this split. It interrupts the flow of the music, the transition between the two parts could have been done in a smoother way. Flow is absolutely the keyword here, just like on Burzum's "Filosofem". Sieghetnar uses the same type of "hypnotic" elements to capture the listener. Thankfully "Versunkenheit" doesn't have any interruptions like "In Spektren..." and is therefore the best Sieghetnar track on this split in its melancholic splendour.

Uruk-Hai: 90 %
Uruk-Hai presents the listener with three well-produced tracks of highly cinematic, bombastic and enjoyable Tolkien-inspired ambient. This one-man band's discography is huge and definitely not all of it is gold, but for this split very good material has been chosen. It appears that when Mr. Hugin's on, he's really on.
All tracks contain Tolkien-related samples, but I don't know their source. The best description I can come up here with is "Summoning without the metal parts". The music consists of powerful drums, majestic synths, piano, choirs and occasionally additional instruments like horns, violin, clarinet etc. All tracks feature guitar occasionally as well but it's very down in the mix, only creating some distortion in the background. I'm not sure whether Hugin himself does any vocals here, or whether all vocal parts have been sampled. But as there are some black metal vocals too, I suppose it's either him or a guest vocalist. Thankfully these vocals aren't annoyingly hysterical'n'screamy like the ones Pr. Sergiy (Moloch) does when he contributes vocals to Uruk-Hai. I've never liked that guy's voice much. No use in picking out any individual track here as each picks up where the previous left off, creating a continuum. Uruk-Hai does very well at portraying Tolkien's world, these three tracks felt like three mini-movies.

Sample Uruk-Hai: 

Sample Sieghetnar: