Anthologie Der Abkehr

From another anonymous black metal group that sound like very much like established players -- Wallfahrer -- comes the all-German-language Anthologie Der Abkehr, their debut, which unexpectedly hit the top ten on Bandcamp last week. A tough, solid slab of black metal, it nonetheless has some folk gentleness to its songs under the ceaseless tremolo-picking. Wallfahrer's approach is a steady, patient attack. All the songs are midpaced and mixed with the drums far beneath the growling guitars, which dominate the album in a solid wall of low riffing. Underneath all that, little picked melodies come to the forefront whenever the layered rhythm guitars stop. An emotional atmosphere and a definite trend toward melody make the tracks more approachable than those of Wallfahrer's colder and harsher kin from the Norse countries, reminding me of some of Imperium Decadenz's work, or that of Vallendusk. The band's tight discipline leaves nothing out of place; several commentators have already suggested that whoever's behind this project is anything but an amateur. In some ways, all that focus on discipline and production quality constraints the music; Wildes Heer (Epilog Des Herbstes) has difficulty capturing the atmosphere of the Wild Hunt when the music is as regular as a metronome. But Anthologie Der Abkehr's perfectionism doesn't soften its core strength, and the velvet glove of the melodies still has plenty of steel-hard blastbeats and tremolo riffing underneath. "Misanthropic" seems like a hard term to apply (exactly how much black metal is considered philanthropic?), especially given how easy it is to get into the band's sound, but I'll leave that for subgenre purists to fight over. It's a solid black metal album that Wallfahrer's practically giving away up on Bandcamp, and it's well worth checking out. Bandcamp: https://wallfahrer.bandcamp.com/album/anthologie-der-abkehr.