Werewolf Promotion, 2014
Genre: Black Metal
1. Eternal Curse Upon Life
2. The Path of the Awakened
3. Ancient Storm of Forgotten Curse
4. The Endless Dream
5. Message from Beyond Stellar Spheres
6. Winds of Icecold Lakes
Wow what a follow-up! As you can tell I've typically been a little less than impressed with Dunkelheit over their past releases, but here we have a new full-length and from the first progression I am immediately sold on how good this is going to be! The only truly disappointing thing about this release is the lack of mentioning Beksinski as the artist. This album even features three of his pieces on it and, I just think they should have named him at the very least. Granted his art is all over Black Metal and its some of the most arresting stuff, but throw the credit down in the liner notes.
Anyway, this is the best Dunkelheit album by far. It actually has studio versions of some of the songs on the earlier demos and some other newer songs. The demo recordings were so poor that the music kind of lost its real appeal, but I'm glad they re-recorded these because I never would have known how incredible "Eternal Curse Upon Life" would be otherwise! As an opener for the album it immediately pulls you in and gets you read to enjoy a very well crafted album. It feels more like Dunkelheit is drawing of the German and Finnish sounds of Black Metal for this release in a lot of ways. Since I love that sound, I've enjoyed this album immensely start to finish! To top it off they really nailed the production this too, similarly to "Frozen in Eternity", but the songs are just much better.
In the end I'm elated to finally hear something this great from the band. If you look back at the demos it seemed like something like this would eventually grace our ears, but it just never came out. It seems like they wanted to go back and re-record their old stuff and release studio albums in order of the writing, which does make some sense. However, it looks like we've finally gotten caught up on their backlog of material and I really can't wait to hear what's next. If this is the progression the band is taking I would expect the next album to be even better!
BergStolz, 2012
Genre: Black Metal
Wacht:
1. Excelling Aesthesia
2. Idealistic Elitism
3. Unveiling Desecration
Dunkelheit:
4. Levitating Amongst the Stars
5. Ride to the Realm
6. Black Sun Rising
7. Dissolving the Mysteries
Side Wacht: ...coming eventually... (Probably not though, I'm not really into Wacht)
Side Dunkelheit:
After a disappointing debut, I was curious to see where this split would land in terms of Dunkelheit's compositions. Would it be more Burzum worship, or would it favor the later demos that were more intense. All the booklet says is that the song were recorded in 2009, so who knows what year they were composed.
I'm happy to report that the songs on this split sit somewhere between the two. The only really slowed down song is "Black Sun Rising", which moves into the instrumental closing track pretty nicely. Nebel seems to have dropped the high pitched wail vocals altogether. Instead we have the deeper styled Black Metal vocals and, frankly, it does make things sound a bit more sinister to me. The first two songs are of their faster variant though, and these worked out pretty well. I think they're still messing around with the faster style, because these songs are nothing very spectacular, but they are closer to the last demo they released. It might take a few releases to finally get this sound to work for them or to at least blend it with the old Burzum style they seem to go back to every now and again. In the end, the Dunkelheit side is good for what it is, but it is nothing overly exceptional, so if you miss out on the split, there's no real harm done. Hopefully the next release will have even bigger improvements!
Werewolf Promotion, 2010
Genre: Black Metal
1. Intro
2. Death is Only a Dream
3. The Blue Light
4. Never See the Light Again
5. Another Existence
6. Outro
Finally the debut album from Dunkelheit has arrived! And I'm sad to report it wasn't that great. Given how the project had been progressing in the demo stages I was expecting a far more excellent listen, but this debut makes more sense when you read into the liner notes. It says the songs were originally composed between 2006 and 2007. So, if you remember back, I was not a big fan of their first demo and a decent amount of this material sounds like that. The only song that I know is from 2007 is "The Blue Light" and its the best one on this album.
The intro starts off sounding reminiscent of Moonblood, but it swiftly gives way to the first song that turns into mid-paced Burzum worship. The songs are extremely simplified, even for Burzum worship this is pretty simplified. Unfortunately the album lacks a lot of the character that Burzum had, so it makes for a relatively boring listen. I think they're trying to be more "atmospheric" with a bit more of a droning approach to things, but I'm afraid it doesn't sound particularly great. The only really good song on here is "The Blue Light", which is the song from 2007. On the upside the recording production is very good. It's manages to keep the really great elements of the raw style, but the production is good enough for us to all hear what is actually going on much more clearly.
In the end, I am not a fan. I found the majority of this album to be pretty boring. If you wanted to hear what the band would sound like if progressed from the first demo tape, then here is the album to go with that. For me, though, I really hope they switch over to something more akin to the last two demos, because they were really onto something very good with those releases. Maybe in the next studio effort we'll hear a progression of that sound.
Werewolf Promotion, 2009
Genre: Black Metal
1. The Endless Dream
2. The Blue Light
This is the third demo tape from Dunkelheit and it basically picks up where "Eternal Curse Upon Life" left off for the most part. This is really just a rehearsal recording, so at times it's a little rough around the edges. Once again they publish the demo on cassette with a pro-printed cover and tape with stickers. This demo is limited to 200 hand-numbered copies and I own #200.
It seems that the "Eternal Curse Upon Life" demo caught the attention of Werewolf Promotion, which is a label the band would continue to work with. I've been a fan of a lot of Werewolf Promotion releases over the years and that label has a pretty good ear for things I like, that's really how I wound up finding out about Dunkelheit. At any rate, this is their first release on that label and here we have two rehearsal tracks, which are naturally quite raw. The riffing is pretty good for the most part, some sections clearly could use work, but if this was recorded after the "Eternal Curse Upon Life", I think the project is really starting to develop even better ideas. Vocally Nebel is kind of doing a hybrid of the more usual Black Metal screams and the high range Burzum style. It works out pretty well, giving a more strained and tortured feel to the vocal performance. I very much prefer this approach over the the just high screaming of the first demo. Even though there are only two songs on this demo you get around 20 minutes of music, so don't expect this to be a quick listen.
I think Dunkelheit is on its way to producing something pretty good and it's about time they should hit a studio and make a proper recording for their music. The songs on here hit somewhere between a Mayhem style and a Darkthrone style, which is interesting since the first demo was all Burzum, so I'll be happy if they continue in the Darkthrone/Mayhem vein, which I personally enjoy a lot more.
A.M.F. Productions, 2008
Genre: Black Metal
Eternal Curse Upon Life: (2008)
1. Eternal Curse Upon Life
2. Winds of Icecold Lakes
3. Death is Only a Dream
Spell of the Dark Woods: (2007)
4. Intro
5. Spell of the Dark Woods
6. The Eternity Opens
7. Et hvitt lys over skogen (Burzum cover)
If you missed out on the first two demo tapes from Dunkelheit like I did, then this compilation was released in the same year as the second demo. I really enjoy listening to demos like this, even if the music is never really that great or the production is atrociously bad, because I like hearing how a band starts out. I like to see how a band grows over time as they try to discover their own sound. This pressing comes with a pro-printed booklet with a dubbed tape with stickers. I'm sure its limited in some fashion, but there is nothing saying what the limitation is.
Even though this tape starts with their second demo, which I'm sure is going to be the better of the two, I like to go in order of release date, so we'll begin with "Spell of the Dark Woods". The intro to the demo reminds of something you'd hear on the likes of Mütiilation with its weird feeling patterns. However, it isn't long before we get into the first track. Now you'll notice the closing track on the first demo is a Burzum song, this is going to be a major indicator of what influences Dunkelheit most. This demo is very clearly heavily influenced by Burzum more than anything else, right down to the higher pitched wails for the vocal performance. It's strange to see a track titled "The Eternity Opens", which I'm sure has to be a Mayhem reference, but then it just sounds like Burzum like the song before. They've mastered the Burzum song so well, that the Burzum cover is actually quite good. The production quality is so raw that it's actually a bit worse production wise than the original, but it manages to fit that early 90's vibe with such a raw sound. I'm not the biggest fan of Burzum, so, for me, I'm not very into this demo in the grand scheme of things.
The second demo from Dunkelheit "Eternal Curse Upon Life" is very different from the first. If you were expecting the project to keep up the Burzum theme, you might be disappointed to find they've taken things up a notch and play a far different style of Black Metal. For me though, this is a very pleasant shift. First off, the music is much faster, and the chord structuring is much catchier with far more fire in their overall sound. This is the kind of Black Metal I would get to know from Dunkelheit on future releases, so it's nice to see they started developing this style earlier. The overall musicianship has dramatically improved over that years time as well and I think this is a good sign that the project will eventually get somewhere pretty decent before long.
If you're a fan of the band Dunkelheit and want to see where they started, but couldn't track down their original demos, then this cassette compilation is totally worth getting. Sure, it's not the best Black Metal out there, but it's an good look into the bands past. Unfortunately nothing really has much in the way of replay value here, so for most people it's probably not really worth getting. Unless you really get into the whole demo aspect of Black Metal like I do.
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