Review by Michael on August 17, 2026.

Personally, I really like it when the artwork of a black metal album is kind of obscure and scary. This is actually the case with Schrat's debut album on the German label Folter Records from 2018. A kind of nightmarish demon is being evoked by some druids in a mysterious forest. That looks cool indeed. And so does the music.

Kicking off with a sinister intro, the Germans don't waste too much time on friendly soundscapes. As soon as the intro is over, they instantly unleash some black metal fury. Heavily influenced by Norwegian black metal from the '90s, Schrat play fast but also quite catchy black metal without too much unnecessary stuff like female vocals or excessive keyboard use. No, what you can hear here is sheer hatred and destruction.

The vocals are super raw and high-pitched, full of anger and bile, absolutely relentless and sinister. Framed by heavy tremolo-picked guitars and thunderous drums, every song is quite remarkable. 'Masken Des Schweigens' ("Masks of Silence") is strongly reminiscent of Immortal back when they released "Pure Holocaust", both in terms of speed and some of the riffs. But it's not an Immortal rip-off like Swedish Rimfrost, for example. Let's just say they were a source of inspiration. In some riffs, you can also hear some thrash influences, if you want to, just like in 'Gräberland' ("Graveland"), mainly old Slayer. And again, when they reduce the tempo, it becomes sort of super catchy and brutal and reminds me a lot of the early '90s black metal stuff.

The production has also turned out very well. Sometimes (or even more often), you get a shitty, crappy production when it comes to black metal because the musicians want to be as 'trve' as possible (or they simply cannot play their instruments), but here everything sounds excellent. It is powerful and punchy and just hits you in the face.

The only thing that is a little bit irritating is that there are only four real songs on "Albtraumgänger", and the new music ends after about 25 minutes. The rest consists of an intro/outro plus four live tracks recorded in 2017, taken from the previous album "Schattenwahn" and the follow-up EP "Artefakt". And again, the sound is quite okay for an underground live recording. It sounds a little bit muffled and harsh, but I guess nobody expects a live recording à la Black Sabbath's "Live Evil".

So there might be a question as to whether this release is a real full-length album or more of an EP. Nevertheless, it is a cool piece of German black metal that everybody who likes extreme metal should check out.

Rating: 8.5 out of  10