Review by Michael on April 17, 2025.

Rost Ensemble is the third studio album by the German black metal band Gottmaschine. As you can probably anticipate in the German band name and the titles, the lyrics are kept in German and this is something that doesn't work in a lot of cases. But here, quite similar to their countrymen Kanonenfieber, it fits quite well because the harsh pronounced words give the songs a very brutal, cold and hateful flair.

The lyrics are very philosophical, mostly they deal with the decline of mankind and the dilemma that goes hand in hand with the use of modern technology. All is very dark and hopeless, a lot of biological metaphors are used in the songs so that the band has created something quite unique in the scene and what I personally really like are the puns here and there. This you can only understand if you speak German (for example the intro called "Blechreiz" instead of "Brechreiz" which originally means "Nausea") but when you have a closer look there, you can see that the guys really cared about their lyrics.

Musically Gottmaschine play traditional black metal with a lot of powerful riffs and speed in their eight songs. Here and there the songs are interrupted by some futuristic samples (like in "Eiserne Phalanx" or "Abzug Aus Der Ultramasse") and again there are some similarities to Kanonenfieber. Just take the militaristic kick-off in "Antagonist" and also the basic song structures are not too far from their latest output "Die Urkatastrophe". In some parts they are a little bit more thrashy / punky (like the tremolo-peppered "Eiserne Phalanx" which is a really straight-forward track that blasts everything out of its way. "Hammer Der Szenarien" even sounds like some technical death metal stuff like Atheist or Death at the beginning of the track. Not too long, just a quick spark before it all turns into a maelstrom of desperation and hopelessness.

The last track "Das Ende Aller Ären" (which means "the end of all eras" in English) starts with a siren-like chant that drags you down. The basic tempo is quite slow at first and when the super melodic guitars set in, you literally can touch the drama in this song. This one is probably the catchiest one on "Rost Ensemble" with very sad lyrics- death, departure, maybe suicide? Again the lyrics are very well written, just a little example:

"Gehe nicht, bleib hier- sagt die Stimme, denn auch wenn das Ende naht, ist es doch nur der Beginn von etwas Neuem, ein Zellkern und ein Massengrab."

("Don't go, stay here – says the voice, also if the end is near,it is just the beginning of something new, a cell nucleus and a mass grave.")

So you can see that the lyrics aren't the typical trivial "Satan we worship you in the eternal fire-blabla-lyrics" but something that is worth to be read, too. Musically the band doesn't do anything super new but with the atmospheric / acoustic parts here and there the music gets lightened up and is quite entertaining. What might have become a little bit better is the sound. The songs sometimes sound a little bit muffled and unclear so that they don't come over the way they could. But all in all Rost Ensemble is a good black metal album for everybody who likes no experiments and nothing untraditional in that genre.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10