DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT
Noktvrn SEASON OF MIST
Germany’s atmospheric black metallers put their peers in the shade
YOU CAN’T TALK about contemporary atmospheric black metal without mentioning Germany’s Der Weg Einer Freiheit. With their fifth album, they solidify their spot at the top of their national scene and set a high bar for everyone else, pairing melancholy and melody with aggression and anguish.
By making Noktvrn an album centred around the nighttime, the band have once again subscribed to a conceptual approach. Inspired by Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturnes, they indulge in darkness, the fading of light, the fantastic realm of dreams and the freedom that can be found within. Their nods to classical music might be subtle, but you only have to look at the finesse and skill these compositions have been crafted with to understand that Der Weg Einer Freiheit have long outgrown the (post-)black metal label.
After the acoustic guitar intro, Finisterre II, a tie-in to their previous album and its title track, songs like Monument and Morgen prove that the Germans have further honed their talent to create intriguingly complex song structures and sounds that take all the right turns to leave the roads most travelled by their contemporaries. Recorded live, these songs have reached a new level of density and a natural flow that carries you through the entirety of the album. Immortal and
Haven that are the real standout tracks, being not only the band’s first two songs in English, but also the first to mainly feature clean vocals.
While former tourmate Dávid György Makó, aka The Devil’s Trade, lends his distinct voice to illustrate the push and pull between light and dark, calm and turmoil on
Immortal, it’s DWEF vocalist and mastermind Nikita Kamprad himself whose delicate singing turns the dreamy album closer Haven into a post-rock monument that seems to be building up all the way to the stars. Let’s hope they never come down.
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FOR FANS OF: Imperium Dekadenz, Wolves In The Throne Room, Agrypnie