Graupel - Am Pranger...Ván, 2010
Genre: Black Metal
1. Daemonicum
2. Das Blutende Mal
3. Schwarze Feder
4. Herkünfte Schatten
5. Kalte Fessel
6. Ekel
7. Entgeistert (Outro)
Graupel may not release music very often, but when they do it is always an excellent event. Here we have a new full-length from the band and it is by far one of the best album released in that year. This time they put the album out on Ván and they've done wonderful things with the packaging. This comes with a really beautiful slipcase and a booklet printed on extremely heavy paper with an excellent design layout that fits the aesthetics of this album perfectly.
"Am Pranger..." is an excellent follow-up to "Auf Alten Wegen...", it really advances the sound and ideas brought forth on that album. We have everything we loved about the debut, the vicious intensity, the atmospheric moments and the wonderfully catchy riffs that somehow work amidst Black Metal this violent sounding. Production wise I think they took a step back a little to make things more organic and raw, which is perfect. The production is closest to the split with Endstille and it's really the perfect production for a band like Graupel. Zingultus went all out on the vocals this time around and we have a lot of varied moments from him. This album really showcases his range as a vocalist and it's great because a lot of Black Metal vocals tend to be rather monotonous. I wonder if this vocal performance really solidified the idea of him taking over as Endstille's frontman when Iblis stepped down. I think everyone will be interested to note how "Herkünfte Schatten" opens and remember to compare it to an early Old Man's Child song found on either "In the Shades of Life" or "Born of the Flickering"... I swear it's almost the exact same thing! Granted Graupel change things up a lot and it's really just the opening riff that sounds similar to Old Man's Child, but pretty cool homage either way. The only kind of weird thing is the over seven minute ambient outro. It fits, but, frankly, I'd rather have another song from the band.
In the end this is one of the better Black Metal albums out there of this style. Graupel do an excellent job of putting a lot of pieces together that you wouldn't think fit that well together and make it work extremely well. Graupel releases new music very rarely, so we'll probably have a long wait if we hear from this project again... however, based on the past efforts I think it's going to be worth the wait.
Pranger Produktionen/Nordische Stahlwerke, 2006
Genre: Black Metal
Graupel:
1. Im Hause Escharra
2. Blutvoyeurisus
3. Westradikal
Endstille:
4. Battles Against the North
5. Your Love is Infectious
6. To Conquer the Sun
Side Endstille: here
Side Graupel:
This split is probably one of the best splits in my entire collection. A lot of splits I buy because I like one of the bands and then the other band is something I've never heard of and it's not very good. Splits like this one are a different story though, this is the collaboration of two really excellent projects. So, naturally, as soon as I saw this announced, I immediately ordered a copy for myself. This split is on 12" vinyl only and limited to 500 hand-numbered copies, which I own #401.
After a fairly intense debut album from Graupel, this split continues very nicely where the album leaves off. I think the tracks are a little more raw than even the album recording and they actually sound a lot more similar to Endstille's style of production. It was surprising to have "Im Hause Escharra" start off with a very slow styled guitar line, but before long the song picks up and we're back at what Graupel does best, in my opinion anyway. The Graupel tracks march a long at a blistering pace and they have that vicious intensity I've come to expect from the project. They really worked on songs with no frills for this split, so that when the Endstille side begins it feels like the projects fit together quite nicely. This is not something we usually get with splits, usually one side sounds vastly different from the other, but in this case it feels like a more cohesive album and I really appreciate that. So, if you're a fan of both of these projects and are in the mood for some intense Black Metal, then this split will not steer you wrong! Great work from both projects.
Cold Dimensions, 2005
Genre: Black Metal
1. Heimkehr
2. Saat Zieht Zeit
3. Die Notglocke
4. Der alte Weg
5. Requies Filii
6. Soll und Sein
7. Von der Gunst zur Schelte
8. Glück der Söhne
9. Ein Sterbelied auf Metall
10. Blutend Weiß
Here we finally arrive at the debut full-length from this project. I think this is actually the first thing I heard from the band and the main reason I picked this up was because everything Cold Dimension puts out is good, so I figured this would be no exception. In that regard it certainly wasn't and ever since I got this album when it was originally released I've continued to enjoy listening to it. Graupel is a band that manages to get a fair amount of frequent play form me even decades later!
The debut is pretty much everything I wanted a studio recording of Graupel to sound like after hearing the first two releases. This album is extremely well done, because they've managed to strike a really excellent balance between intensity and atmosphere. The album manages to maintain that intense and violent performance we heard on the earlier Graupel recordings, but they've also infused some level of really dark atmosphere into the mix. This means we don't get an entire blast fest for an album, but instead a very dynamic listen as the moods shift between extremely violent to really somber with songs like "Requies Filii". Even amidst the intensity they still have some extremely catchy riffing that really pulls the listener in wanting us to hear this stuff over and over again. The only sad part about the release is their bassist Gruel has left the project. I don't know what it was about his bass setup, but it really managed to cut through the mix and make everything sound so much heavier and more intense.
So if you're looking for an intoxicating and intense listen, this is an excellent album to delve into. There really isn't a single bad song on here and the production is pretty well done. It doesn't feel noisy or overly raw, you can hear everything pretty well in the mix too. The album still manages to maintain that real instrument organic feel as well, so its a really well done release overall.
Westwall Produktion, 2004
Genre: Black Metal
Encomium:
1. Ashes of a Thousand Years
2. To Burn the Temple of Moral
Graupel:
3. Weiß wie Schnee
4. Seelenkampf
Side Encomium: ...coming eventually...
Side Graupel:
The next release under the Graupel name is a split 7" with Encomium. Apparently this was originally supposed to be released by Sombre Records, but they never managed to get it out. I'm sure this is limited in some fashion, but there is nothing stated anywhere on what the limitation could be. It's probably 500 copies, which is fairly standard for vinyl of this nature. It also comes with an insert with lyrics and other liner notes. It's basically a nicely printed 8 and half by 11 piece of paper though, not an actual poster of any kind.
Graupel present us with an entirely new song to start us off and it's pretty much on par with what you'd expect after hearing "Als der Nebel..." It's more of that intense and violent style of Black Metal, however, they do manage to try and switch things up, because after about a minute and a half the song breaks into an atmospheric interlude and things take on a bit more atmospheric riffing. I think it would be interesting if Graupel managed to put this type of thing together more, marrying their intensity with a bit more atmospheric edge, because there isn't much out there like that. Then when they break into their catchier riffs, they tend to feel way heavier as well, with the bass thundering away at the groove. After that we're treated to a re-recording of the song "Seelenkampf" featured on their demo. The recording quality really isn't that much better than the original demo, so its not really adding that much more to the experience. However, it is cleaned up enough so you can get a far better feel for the song and it is certainly a great song, so I'm not surprised they wanted to redo it.
Graupel - Als der Nebel...Self-Released, 2001
Genre: Black Metal
1. Intro
2. Graupel
3. Seelenkampf
4. Zwergennacht
5. Ringgeister
6. Kriegerherz
It seems Graupel has been a project for quite some time, but it was only in 2001 that it finally saw the light of day with a recording of any kind. I found out about this project through Zingultus' involvement, because I had followed Nagelfar and enjoyed them quite a bit, so I decided to take a look at what else he offered. "Als der Nebel..." was originally released as a self-released CD-R limited to 50 copies, which I missed out on, so I wound up with the cassette version released by Sombre Records in 2002 (pictured above).
Graupel plays raw and noisy vicious Black Metal on this demo. If you were expecting something similar to things like Nagelfar, it's not really like that. Sure the last song has a clean guitar tone that is somewhat reminiscent, but that's it. Graupel plays faster and far more violent Black Metal. They remind me a lot of what Endstille started doing in the same year. The music can sometimes take on a very militant feel with how vicious some of the riffs can sound. However, Graupel is a little different, they're not afraid to throw some real groove into their riffing. The entire song of "Kriegerherz" is basically an entirely groove laden song. It stands in contrast to such an intense and uncompromising demo, but at the same time it really works as a closer. It reminds me a lot of what Gorgoroth manages to pull off with their slower songs.
If you like your Black Metal raw and uncompromising then this is certainly a band to watch out for. The usual one complaint is that they could certainly clean up the noisy production a little bit, but we'll see what happens if they put out a full-length release.
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