Vehemency
It’s not a rare thing to see black metal bands evolving into more avantgarde and progressive directions and while some fail miserably at it, some, like Todtgelichter here on their third album ”Angst”, succeed in creating an interesting album of emotional yet intense black metal with progressive tendencies, or perhaps prog with black metal tendencies - either way, ”Angst” proves that the well of this kind of genre fusions has certainly not run dry yet in 2010.
It doesn’t take many seconds into the first track to realize that there’s a lot of work put into making this album: multiple layers bring interesting melodies and there’s a lot of diversity going on, from the sudden yet carefully placed female vocals after male screams to the most aggressive bursts of energy. ”Oblivion” is at times close to the grandiose landscapes of Disillusion’s ”Back to Times of Splendor”, while the shorter ”Phobos & Deimos” attacks with furious blasts, and ”Allmählich” slowly closes the 55-minute album with post-rock esque organs and clean guitar sound. Sounds like pretentious fluctuation between genres? Not really, the album flows naturally and nothing seems out of place, and there’s not much instrumental wankery to be found here; just pure emotions in a breathing, atmospheric production. Being a long album with diverse textures, it surely takes multiple listens to find all the nuances that are in the depths of this record.
To cut this praise for a while and to focus on some downsides: ”Angst” isn’t still a perfect record after all, even if quite impressive. Tracks ”Subway” and ”Moloch” drag on maybe a bit too long and have somewhat unnecessarily technical riffage to my taste, albeit the former does have a sweet chorus and the latter builds up nicely towards the end. Otherwise I’m not sure do I find any crucial flaws here. Any certain highlight tracks are hard to mention because at worst the album is still decent, but the cleanly sung passages towards the end of ”Café of Lost Dreams” always stand out as the most innovative ideas of the album when I spin this record. ”Angst” has convinced me pretty well and most certainly deserves a favorable score.