This has some vague notability in the Sieghetnar catalog for being one of the only releases to contain vocals. Don't think it matters much, though; the vocals are so sparse and pushed so far back in the production that they're rendered almost meaningless in the greater context of the music. Sieghetnar is basically a Vinterriket-style black metal/ambient project, similar in style and scope to the Swiss one, only having the distinction of not having a weirdo fanbase large enough to buy DVDs of still shots of mountains. It's fairly cool music but at the same time there's about a million other projects doing almost exactly the same thing as this one, so it all comes down to your arbitrary preference in the end.

This is primarily midpaced, heavily synth-based black metal with lots of droning, static riffs, rather formless, wandering song structures, and relatively long tracks; what you're imagining this sounding like in your head is exactly what it is. The synths are the lead instrument: they're the loudest element in the production and really do a lot more than the guitars, which are an almost power metal-inspired bed of harmonizing tremolo picking. Surprisingly enough, the synthlines are very well composed- frankly, Sieghetnar feels like an ambient project dressed up in black metal drag (similar to Xasthur in this regard), so it's no surprise that the most ambient elements of this music are the best: namely, the slowly shifting melodic textures of the synths and guitars and the very patient development of themes over the course of the tracks. Nothing about Sieghetnar is immediate; even when a blast kicks in seemingly out of nowhere, it's still sort of cautious and planned. There aren't any surprises to be found.

I guess that might be a problem for some people, but surprise isn't exactly what this music thrives on. A lot of how much you enjoy this album will come down to just how much you're going to be able to tolerate what amounts to riffless, basically go-nowhere black metal. There are very few proper riffs to speak of, and they're not very memorable, usually just being three or four tremolo picked power chords hanging like a cloud behind the synthlines. The songs don't really have motion to them- at the end of one of the long tracks, it doesn't exactly feel like anything's been resolved. It's just sort of an exploration of the snowy, desolate atmospheres that Sieghetnar is so preoccupied with. If you can take it for what it is, it's a pretty enjoyable ride, but I wouldn't begrudge someone for demanding music a little more active than this.

So yeah, I guess if you're actually into stuff like Vinterriket, you might as well give this a try. It's not the sort of music that really CAN be intensely gripping; it's just worth an occasional spin when you're hanging out at home and doing other things. I'm pretty comfortable with it, if not overly impressed. Give it a shot.

OK, so I already made an introduction to the band in my previous review (which should have been the first one, since it's for their last album so far), so I won't spend much time on this. I'll only mention the fact that in said review I stated that this band might very well be the epitome of ambient black metal, and I still hold to that statement, but don't let that fool you, this album is far from that ambient perfection achieved in latter albums.

The album starts with a faustous intro, which is the only time in the whole album the keyboards take the lead, thankfully, because even though keyboards are more elaborated in this album, they still go undetected at parts, making great use of them in the means of creating steady ambiance. There are also some sound effects now and then, the sound of rain and thunder, your usual black metal imagery.

Guitars are louder and a bit harsher but still manage to produce that wonderful tone completely unique to this band, it sort of sounds like the buzzing of a washing machine or an old A.C., which makes for a soothing experience even in the most aggressive parts of the music. It's almost a drone-y feeling if you will.

Another great difference with future releases is that, in this album I can actually hear vocals, which are harsh and medium-pitched, mixed considerably low in the mix but not unlistenable, they're there and you'll notice them, but like in many other bands, the vocals become another instrument, another sound mixed in the great flow of the music as a whole, therefore from time to time I don't feel like I'm listening to a guy growling at a mic, but rather feels like it's an extra guitar with some awesome and eerie effects.

The drumming is quite neat, has a nice sound to it, not too high on the mix but still dominates the rhythm at it's will. They're also considerably varied, changing constantly, even periodically, which helps keeping boredom at bay. They go from slow, Burzum-like drumming (4/4 hi-hats in every beat, one bass drum hit on the first beat and a snare hit on every third beat, you know) to fast and relentless blastbeats. On that note, the use of blastbeats is not overdone and actually aids to the ambiance (Even though not as much as in albums like Bewußtseinserweiterung, now THAT'S an incredible blend of blastbeats and interrupted, calm ambiance), something that not that many bands can get away with (the only one I can think of right now is Inferi's What Once Shined).

The album overall is far more violent than future releases, thus the ambiance is not as dominant, not to mention songs aren't as long as they'd eventually evolve to become, there being two 6min songs, two 8min songs and only one song over the 10min mark (that being the Burzum "cover"). This album does not reveal the great ambient tendency these guys (or guy, who knows) are able to manufacture, but overall it's a better piece of black metal per se than other releases which are more on the ambient side. There seems to be an aggressive-passive progression in this band, which is fine for me, since both their more "violent" releases and their more "ambient" releases are both superb.

One last thing worth mentioning is the Burzum cover of the song Gebrechlichkeit, which is quite original, far better than any version of this song I've listened off the numberless tribute albums floating around, although it's not 100% (or, I'm gonna be honest, even closely) loyal to the original song, and at times sounds unrecognizable. The song even includes drum lines which start out sounding like a tribute to Varg's dull drumming but subsequently becomes more and more complex and fast (not too much though). But this cover truly accomplishes the mirroring of the song when it comes to the feeling of isolation and total death the original song brings. It would be like a different approach to the original song, which holds the original feeling and central melody but changes absolutely everything else, much to my amazement and amusement (for a relatively similar event, listen to Avathar's cover of Ulver'sss Utreise or even Zergheyth's masterfully arranged version of Burzum's Tomhet).

The thing with Sieghetnar, and some might thing this is actually a negative thing, is that most songs sound a lot like each other, but this in fact only manages to fabricate a complete and unbroken piece of musical art, a whole experience instead of separate songs to focus on. This album, and this band, are not meant to make you focus but, on the contrary, make your mind blurry and take you to a trance-y state of relaxation. And I know most ambient bands aim to that, but as I mentioned in my other review for this band, these guys can pull that trick better than most, if not better than all other ambient bands. I mean, their albums show a clear evolution (As I mentioned) from a more straight-forward but still ambient-oriented black metal to a completely ambient-dominated music which at times stops being black metal and becomes pure, even sort of droning, ambiance. I myself prefer their more ambient albums, they feel more original and work amazingly, but this release is incredible on it's own credits. Dark, ambient, relentless black metal for the true lovers of multifunctional music.

“Todessehnsucht” is quite different from the debut and not only in the sense that it’s the first instrumental Sieghetnar album. First I must say that the lack of vocals doesn’t bother me at all. As this and latter releases show, Sieghetnar’s music works well without vocals and the music alone is enough to capture the listener. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to put the vocal lines on this album if I were asked to.

Overall the songs are less varied than on the debut, the blastbeats have been dropped entirely and the tempo is predominately slow. The feeling is very withdrawn and sombre and it also feels like everything is hidden behind a thick layer of fog. The main reason for the foggy feeling is the production. It’s pretty muddy, especially the guitar sound is less trebly than it was on the debut. This creates a hazy wall-of-sound feel to the music. The slow pace and simplicity of the music plus the production may make “Todessehnsucht” seem boring and inaccessible to some but I like it.

The album starts with “Saat”, an ominous and creepy ambient track with an industrial touch to it that sounds like something by a band signed to Cold Meat Industry. It creates the feeling of being lost inside a labyrinth, catacomb or cave without light, just fumbling around trying to find the way out. The title track that follows is a slow flowing ambient black metal piece, quite monotonous but also pretty soft, like a caress. The synths hover above the guitar in a ghostly manner, giving me visions of vast wintry woods (this kind of music always seems to give those kinds of visions). This track ends with a long ambient part that lasts several minutes; just the synths creating dreamy landscapes, giving the listener a feeling of floating somewhere deep in space.

The synth melody during the first part of “…eere” sounds like an eerie yet seductive call from beyond. If you follow it you’ll most likely get lost and never find your way back. This perhaps the most hypnotic track of the album, a real getting-lost-in-the-landscape kind of thing. After six minutes the track suddenly speeds up. This gives me the feeling of a person starting to run after having walked slowly for a long time. Perhaps the person thinks he or she has found the way home after getting lost but is that really the truth? After the ten-minute mark the tempo slows down again, indicating that the person probably got lost again.

The final track “Staub” is a soft, foggy and somewhat distant keyboard ambient track. Since this album is called “Todessehnsucht” (longing for death) and Staub means “dust”, it could be that this track is a requiem to the physical existence, a final scene. The longing for death has been fulfilled and the body has turned to dust. All that is left is an ambient track commemorating the existence of a life that has ended.

This was the third full-length from German black metal export Sieghetnar, although today I'm covering the reissue on Pesttanz Klangschmiede which, given the information I have, includes vocals as opposed to the original release which didn't. There's also some new artwork too, which is without a doubt superior to the original, and what I could imagine to be a nice bonus for any fans of the act. For the uninitiated (like myself prior to listening) Sieghetnar play a drawn out, atmospheric blend of black metal taking cues from minimalistic Darkthrone or even early Blut Aus Nord.

Whilst Sieghetnar seems to know how to craft some decent black metal riffs, and some chilling atmosphere, I don't believe the wealth of the material on offer warrants such extended length. Outside of the intro there are two tracks just over the ten-minute mark, and one clocking a leviathan thirty. This would be all well and good if the ideas felt primed to be spread over such a long length, but really a lot of this stuff would be pushing it at seven or eight minutes. Whilst I can appreciate a lot of the parts individually, when it comes together on the whole my attention wavers throughout.

I guess some of the charm in the more atmospheric blend of black metal is being able to lose yourself in a trance, zoning out to the unsettling backdrop; but when acts such as the aforementioned Blut Aus Nord or even US luminary Leviathan can manage to chill and take over the mind in shorter, poignant track lengths, I can't help but feel Sieghetnar come off overblown. One thing I do feel Sieghetnar do really well though, is utilize their spacey synthesizers, and again it springs to mind Blut Aus Nord, particularly the more atmospheric parts of Ultima Thulee.

Fans of the style might well find more in the way of enjoyment here than I did, but the way I see it is: any second wave style black metal elements Sieghetnar offer can be heard to superior effect in the early Darkthrone albums, and if I'm looking for atmosphere I can find it in a more absorbing and concise manner with Darkspace I. As such I can't find all that much reason to give this one a recommendation, the music doesn't really cut it any higher than average, and with similar, superior releases out there I severely doubt I'll be returning for further listening.

Originally written for http://www.metalcrypt.com

It's hard to say exactly why this album works so much bet

er than the earlier Sieghetnar material I've heard- it's not exactly stylistically different- but it absolutely does. I might just chalk it up to a couple years worth of maturing as a songwriter, but I think it might be a little deeper than that. Sieghetnar, of course, is the German ambient black metal project that basically takes entirely after Vinterriket and released an album in a made-up language, which is the only reason anyone knows the project, but behind all that is a one-man endeavor which can actually write some songs. 'Kältetod' is a surprisingly strong album where the whole is much more than the sum of its parts- it's definitely not going to change the world, but it's a very solid ambient black metal album which stands up to multiple listens well and is about as atmospheric as one could ever ask.

The ingredients here are the same as on earlier Sieghetnar work: instrumental material based off slow, delayed walls of guitars, quiet, programmed drums, and synths which form the bulk of the melodic voice. The guitars are really background noise, just harmonizing with the root notes of the synth melodies; there's no real 'riffs' to mention, just hazy, blurring walls of two or three chords at a time, tremolo picked in the background. This isn't a particularly exciting or riffy album; it's more about soaking in the snowy atmosphere. The keys do all the heavy melodic lifting because of this, and they're well composed, bouncing intelligently off of the riffs, and the lack of vocals actually works to the benefit of this album's music overall, since there's really no logical place to put them and it would just end up distracting from the melodic voices.

Well, these descriptions are well and good for the monolithic title track (some patience is clearly required for this music), but the ambient intro and outro, as well as the highly minimal synth track 'Flug Des Rabens' are even more compressed in style. If the title track simply wasn't enough minimalism for you, you'll have the other tracks to look forward to. More impressive is the fact that 'Flug Des Rabens' is actually well composed as well; lush, overlapping synth tones explore a pretty conventional but nonetheless compelling musical space in a manner that has just a hint of cheese but a lot of earnestness to offset it. I'm usually not that into black metal artists trying their hand at ambient, but I have a feeling the sole member of Sieghetnar is the opposite: he's approaching black metal from an ambient standpoint rather than the other way around.

Obviously all your tolerance of this music is based off whether you like droning, starkly minimal black metal, but fans of the Vinterriket style will no doubt find plenty to like here. Yeah, it has something of a bedroom vibe, but fuck it, the melodies are good and have an amateurish intelligence to them which is usually found in good black metal. Give it a shot if you find it.

Going through my computer of late I've found a lot of music that I forgot I had; stuff long ago downloaded out of curiousity and promplty forgotten. Some of it's been great (I must buy that Winter album sometime) but most of it has me rather perplexed and going "What the hell was I thinking?" The wonders of high speed downloading, right? There's no way I- or I'm sure many others- would have as much crap music if it wasn't for it.

Just like the large amount of random Mp3 obscuro on my hard drive, Sieghetnar's a product of the internet generation. "Kaltetod" is in no way inspired, let alone good, and the amount of effort that was put into this suggests it was written and recorded by a 15 year old. Were it not for myspace this album would have never found any way of getting out there; without the advent of super cheap recording this wouldn't exist. I like the internet a fair bit, but it has spawned some monstrosities.

Paying attention to this album is pretty hard, so describing what this sounds like is somewhat difficult. Think of some rather terrible space ambient, I dunno, Biosphere minus the inspiration and good-ness, and then add a tiny, *really* small pinch of distorted, fuzzy guitar (I liked Filosofem but that record has a lot to answer for) and horrible drum programming. I'll admit this doesn't sound like a truly horrible mix of stuff; I like space ambient and I like Filosofem, and even a bunch of Burzum worship bands. Really, it's hard to articulate just how much less this is then the sum of its' parts.

Is it the repetition? The sheer pointlessness of having guitars in this? The long, completely subpar space ambient bits? The lack of direction in the songs? I guess it's a combination of all that; perhaps it's not as hard to articulate as I thought. Long and pointless; to be honest I'm not even sure why I wasted time reviewing the damn thing.

Sieghetnar is very new to the scene, being something like four years old tops, and also seemingly being one of thousands of myspace-shitty-black-metal bands polluting the Internet and our ears, but has managed to surprise a few people, and has gained somewhat of a reputation among the international underground even though very little (if anything at all) is known about the musicians themselves. That said, I always have my doubts about new bands, especially those who release three full lengths in one year (this album being the third full length released in 2008) but this time it was worth it.

What we have here is a black metal/ambient act with everything you'd expect: Lengthy songs, wide use of keyboards and slow paces dominate this sound-scape, but don't be fooled, this is not your average Burzum-spin-off pretentiously exaggerated and mindbogglingly boring black ambient band, oh no. My main problem with most depressive or ambient black metal acts is the fact that they don't seem to understand that, apart from creating a nice atmosphere, they need to know how to hold it, and not stretch the song long past the point of bearability, leading to the creation of albums full of half-decent, half-boring-as-fuck songs. But these guys (guy? I really don't know) here, know their science, and have created the perfect mix of depressive, slow and repetitive black ambient, and plenty of absorbing and everchanging melodies and textures to keep you entertained.

Apart from that, the whole rhythm of the album remains uninterrupted. With this I mean that the natural flow that this kind of music creates on the listener becomes a wide stream that takes you floating away and makes you forget time even exists. I've listened to this album in repeat three times and still don't feel I've had enough, I don't feel this album actually ends, it feels, at the same time, infinite and incredibly short. This is the sensation most, if not all, ambient acts strive for, and only a few actually achieve. This band might as well be the epitome of ambient black metal. There, I said it.

But wait, there's still more! Among the quite excellent black ambient galore, there's still room for excellent and complex musicianship, mainly by the hand of keyboards majestically executed, creating the main melodies as the fuzzy riffs slide underneath them creating a metaphorical river in which these little boats float away, and then, for example in the second song (right about the 19 min. mark, give or take a few seconds), there's this few minutes of completely different music, I can't really call it black metal anymore, it's just playing with rhythm and melody, and it just, somehow, works wonders for the whole mood of the song and album. I keep listening to this, and it keeps surprising me, with every listen there's something new to be found.

I've listened to all the full lengths by this band and actually own two (Kältetod being one of them, the other being Bewußtseinserweiterung) and this is probably their most unique album so far. The only negative thing I have to say about this is the length, which, surprisingly is considerably short (four songs, only one of which surpasses the 10 min. mark. You gotta admit it's pretty short next to their other releases and for an ambient black metal band altogether). I highly recommend this album to anyone who enjoys ambient black metal. This is a great album to start with this band, mainly due to the aforementioned overall length. If you like this album, and feel you could have some more from this band, give the rest of their albums a try. I'm sure you'll not regret it.

Originally written for the paper version of the Terror Cult Zine
http://www.terrorcultprod.glt.pl/

How to spend half an hour wisely? The answer is easy - listen to "Astralwinter" and be prepared to do some intense mind traveling. Focusing on the ambient side of Sieghetnar, this MCD gives you two ambient tracks with one instrumental ambient black metal track squeezed between them. The listener is transported straight out into the landscape shown on the cover, a winter day in the embrace of nature. Another band playing this type of stuff is Vinterriket but I have to say that Sieghetnar does it better. The ambient tracks, while not really more complex than those of Vinterriket, are more beautiful and emotional. Oh, and one more thing, the ambient tracks actually differ from each other. This is something Vinterriket doesn't always manage to accomplish.

"Einklang" is the entrance - a slow-paced grandiose track with a spacious feel that takes you up into the cold sky to drift among the clouds like the eagle on the back cover. The title track is mostly slow-paced with a raw guitar and airy synths/piano in the background. Once again, Thorkraft makes great use of simple and repetitive yet effective riffing in combination with the atmospheric synth layer. Around the eight-minute mark the pace suddenly picks up for a while, inviting one to headbang, but soon it's back to the slow pace again. "Ausklang" is the departure - the dawn is soon to come and the landscape will become dark. In this track the synth melodies are sad and distant.

Relaxing ambient/black metal, does such a thing exist? After having heard this my answer is: yes, absolutely. As strange as it sounds to put the word "relaxing" in the same sentence with "black metal", here it can be done without anyone even raising an eyebrow. Everything comes together here, the concept, the artwork and the feel of the music. Grand visions and freedom of the mind. At best, "Astralwinter" will help you find your Zen.