ATROCITY — Calling the Rain (feat. Yasmin) (review)

ATROCITY — Calling the Rain (feat. Yasmin) album cover EP · 1995 · Gothic Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Calling the Rain" is an EP release by German metal act Atrocity. The EP was released through Massacre Records in July 1995. Along with the "Die Liebe (feat. Das Ich)" EP from November 1995, it bridges the gap between the band´s 3rd and 4th full-length studio albums "Blut (1994)" and "Willenskraft (1996)". It was already obvious on "Blut (1994)" that Atrocity had more or less left their death metal past behind, but "Calling the Rain" still came as a bit of a surprise (not the last surprise in their discography)...

...as it features the band playing in a predominantly acoustic neo-folk style with clean male vocals and ethnic middle-eastern influenced female vocals courtesy of lead vocalist Alexander Krull´s sister Yasmin Krull (artists like Dead Can Dance and Comus come to mind). The use of percussion instead of drums and the almost total lack of distorted electric guitars (with a few exceptions) are also quite the difference from their metal oriented releases. The title track and "Land Beyond the Forest" were also featured on "Blut (1994)". The former is featured here in two versions. The video edit version (which is around 1 minute shorter than the original album version from "Blut (1994)"), and in a remix version. The remaining tracks on the 8 track, 37:05 minutes long EP are exclusive to this release.

The material are for the most part well written and quite intriguing dark neo-folk. Tracks like the title track, "Back From Eternity", and "Land Beyond the Forest", work very well and they are quite catchy in their melancholic grace. Unfortunately the redundant remix version of the title track and the 10:17 minutes long atmopsheric EP closer "Ancient Sadness" drag my rating down. I never understood why artists include remix versions, if they aren´t completely different from the originals (and even then remixes are mostly unnecessary material) and in the case of "Ancient Sadness" it is a long pointless exercise in ambience, which gets tedious after a couple of minutes. Disregarding those two tracks there are still around 20 minutes of good quality music on "Calling the Rain", and Atrocity show that they are fully capable of writing and delivering this type of music. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.
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