Vehemency Germany and depressive black metal, a combo so common. While some gems like Nyktalgia keep the German standards high, most often the result is fairly poor and way too predictable, but luckily Kältetod’s second full-length Reue is at least somewhere in the middle grounds, having its unfortunate symptoms of German DSBM mediocrity yet still offering a fair deal of riffage that is enough interesting.

The music on Reue balances between hazy melancholic melodies, eeriness and occasional aggressiveness. A lot of distortion is to be expected, both on the guitar sound as well as on the vocals. The quality of the music varies a lot: songs like ”Das Lächeln der Verwesung” and ”In die Glut der Weltenseele” are less impressive of the bunch, while such tracks as ”Nur vom Eiswind noch getragen” - close to the sound of old Katatonia - and ”Zermürbt durch Reue” with its ingenious riffing I’m happy to listen to again and again.

For the most part, it’s the muffled production - that is for an unknown reason so damn common in depressive German black metal - that hinders the music on Reue from rising to greatness: in different settings with proper dynamics, I’m sure this music would have had a bigger impact on me. Just give some more space to those drums, some more balls to the muffled guitar sound and lighten the distortion on the vocals and you’ve got a much more impressive album.

All instruments are executed with steady playing - even if there’s some melodies played out of tune but it’s only charming - and no surprise there knowing that these songs were composed between 2004 and 2006 and recorded between 2007 and 2009, so they’ve been in the works for a long, long time. For such a lengthy time span, one could expect something more, but Reue is nonetheless an okay piece of depressive black metal. Nothing outstanding, but a worhty investment if you’re a hardcore fan of the style.