Vehemency I’m pretty confident that Thallium’s second full-length Armanenschaft is a love-or-hate case, being a really sloppily executed black metal album in the spirit of early Graveland and Veles, and I mean very sloppy. How come, then, that I may rate an album of this kind so highly? It’s the charm and magic of unpredictable music. Armanenschaft is, despite the somewhat clear studio production, the exact opposite of generic modern metal where all stones have been turned and the listeners accustomed to precise, almost digitalized playing.

To elaborate the actual music further, Thallium focuses here on atmospheric, wistful and largely melodic (thanks to the loud synths) black metal where mid-tempo drums, no matter how randomly actually played, hold the fuzzy rhythm guitars together, the synths being the main source of melody. The importance of the synths comes clear right on the first metal track ”Return from Near Death”, only to increase on ”Our Dreams Belongs to the Stars” where they dominate even more.

The moderately slow and misty music ends for a while on ”Eagle’s Eye” which is a furious, blast beat filled five minutes, nodding more to Evil’s, Warwolf’s main band’s, direction. ”II” and the bookends provide synth and piano driven material solely, taking a prominent ten minutes of the album’s total length, hence being an important part of the album as well.

Armanenschaft isn’t the most original black metal recording and clearly tries not to be, and sometimes the sloppiness might be more for the album’s bad than good, but there’s something in the natural sound of the album that keeps me getting back to the record every once in a while. Those with a primitive yet melodic taste for black metal are recommended to look into this worthwile effort that hopefully receives continuation in the future.