Total Hate - Official Website
Depopulating Planet Earth |
Germany
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Review by TheOneNeverSeen on August 16, 2023.
My attitude towards Nordicwinter’s music has always been uncertain. I do enjoy the sound of most albums, Evillair’s desperate vocals as well as the band’s overall unusual style of DSBM close to atmospheric black metal. However, there haven’t been many individual songs that I would deem particularly remarkable on their own. For instance, Le Dernier Adieu was consistent, for the riffs were written in a similar fashion and quite atmospheric, but, aside from 'La nuit', possessed no memorable melodies. Beneath The Fleeting Light was a pleasant surprise with the masterpieces 'Hallowed Darkness' and 'Into Nothingness', but the real turning point was This Mournful Dawn, as most of its tracks are flawless DSBM pieces.
The most easily observed difference between this album and the rest of Nordicwinter’s discography is the song length and the way the tracks are arranged. While Le Dernier Adieu had medium-length songs (5-7 minutes) and Beneath The Fleeting Light consisted of songs of various lengths mingled with each other, This Mournful Dawn is a sequence of three 10-minute songs and a 7-minute one, finally concluded by a traditional for the band 3-minute piano outro. This impacts significantly the album’s flow, making the majority of it a relentless interlude-free brook of suffering.
The album’s sound has changed significantly since Beneath The Fleeting Light, which one can tell from the new, much cleaner sound of the acoustic guitar instantly introduced at the beginning of 'Enshrouded By Winter'. The guitars have become more melodic and less heavy, yet retained the "grittiness" of Nordicwinter’s earlier records. The only downside of the new sound is the downplayed sound of drums, but, since the latter never played an important part in the band’s music, the change is not drastic. The vocals are excellent as always, but the quality of the album content, as mentioned above, is higher than ever. The structure of the first track is similar to that of the band’s best song, 'Hallowed Darkness', since it also involves brief acoustic interludes. The song is quite depressive and keeps the listener immersed in its somber atmosphere until the end. The album’s best song, 'Death's Pale Touch' possesses a late Nocturnal Depression-like spirit and a brilliant riff, epic in its sadness just like that of 'We're All Better Off Dead' or 'L’isolement'. 'As Twilight Fades' and 'Autumn's Last Mournful Whisper' are as bleak as their titles, with the former possessing unusual energetic drumming and the latter – a slow-paced atmospheric passage around the middle. The piano outro titled 'My Lament' with its hopeless mood serves as a perfect conclusion for the release.
So, This Mournful Dawn is a great DSBM album and, alongside Beyond Melancholy’s "My Last Moments Of Life..." EP with its unusual scary feeling, the best 2023 release in the genre so far. A must-listen for any DSBM fan or for anyone not yet acquainted with Nordicwinter.
Rating: 9 out of 10
615ViewsReview by Felix on August 14, 2019.
I have read that the population of the African continent is growing by 30 million people each year. In 2050 there will be two billion people in Africa. But wait a moment, four dudes from Bavaria are against it and have a master plan. They simply want to depopulate the Earth. Great idea. To depopulate only Africa would have been an act of racism and everybody with a clear mind would try to stop the crazy Bavarians. But killing the whole mankind is just fair, right?
Either way, don't become confused or even depressed by too much global statistics, try to find comfort with a good black metal album. Too bad that Depopulating Planet Earth cannot help you in this context. Perhaps I am still an absolute beginner when it comes to black metal. However, I cannot express it differently: this album mainly delivers constant noise. I miss almost everything, for instance clear contours, ice-cold melodies, dynamic guitars, thundering drums, charismatic vocals, intelligent tempo changes or breaks and horrifying scenarios. Everything is at best average, but many components do not even reach this level.
The most annoying details are the absence of comprehensible song structures and the absolutely shabby production. You say these two defects go hand in hand? Probably you are right. The drum sound is terrible, and the guitars do not even deliver a minimum of sharpness in view of the muddy mix. But the compositions themselves also reveal immaturity. The songs want to deliver "trve" blackness, but they just rumble down their way without taking the listener with them on their journey. If I forget the dominating hatred for just one moment, the full-length completely lacks emotions. Maybe the opener and the fifth track have a few good moments, but that's definitely not enough to shape a recommendable record. And especially the title track on the fifth position ends in a very strange way. The final solo sounds as if they played their instruments under water. All in all, there are not many sequences where the quartet is creating something good and so their biggest advantage might be that they are not prone to external influences. This wants to be black metal and nothing else.
Be that as it may, one has to endure seven pretty long tracks before the album clocks in at 43 minutes and the prevailing impression is that I have listened to a kind of black metal mishmash. This is a typical debut from the category "We want, but we can't". I know that their third and their fourth album sound much better and I don't want to blame the group for being incapable, but back in 2008, it was not yet time for them to release an album. Thus, I don't speak about a band that lacks integrity, but a band that still had a lot to learn. So now with their better albums in their luggage, Total Hate can re-start their program of depopulation. Hard job. Guess they don't want to know how many - hopefully healthy - African children have seen the light of day while I wrote this review. It took me half an hour, so I think we can welcome roughly 1.700 new African babies. Impressive.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
615Views