Artist: Krieg
Title: The Isolationist
Genre: Extreme Metal
Release Date: 1st November 2010
Label: Candlelight Records
Album Review
Everyone thought that KRIEG was all but dead after the twisted taste of their last album in 2006, ‘Blue Miasma’. It seemed like another great USBM band was going to disappear (others like LEVIATHAN, JUDAS ISCARIOT, and XASTHUR have already left fans sadly) and already people were mourning their loss. Then, suddenly, main-man Imperial goes and reforms his super group TWILIGHT along with other highlight members from LEVIATHAN, ISIS, and NACHTMYSTIUM and releases their second album which was just as frightfully good as the first. Similar to his work in KRIEG, it was a great intermission and prelude to whatever he had planned next for his other group. So no one was really surprised when KRIEG announced a new line-up and a new album coming… and like all the others, kept it a very mystical secret. Fans should expect the unexpected from KRIEG; they always like to do something new with their music on each album and never repeat themselves while retaining some sort of constant sound. It is very hard to classify the band into one corner because they like to jump all over the place. Most would consider this black metal- due to the shrieking vocals, tremolo picking, and use of corpse paint, but Imperial assures listeners it is simply extreme metal from a sick mind, and creativity has no place for labels except to be called (musical) art.
And ‘The Isolationist’ is certainly a sick album, perhaps more twisted than the masterpiece ‘The Black House’. The album is still lo-fi production but not as raw as KRIEG’s debut album which was masterfully evil, but today too primitive and not as complex to entertain listeners. The new album begins with ‘No Future’, which lives up to its bleak title. There’s some spoken word sampling and then KRIEG just kicks things right off. The buzzing guitars sound as schizophrenic as ever with the drums hammering away in the background along with the bass (fans should note that Wrest of LEVIATHAN has taken the bass duties and adds an excellent presence to the music overall with a bit of influence from his own works). Imperial’s voice is as tortured as ever; his fascination with madness, asylums, and isolation is more present than ever on this work. ‘Photographs From An Asylum’ offers the first glimpse of experimentalism with a very quiet, ambient beginning like the clinking of cell doors, and then just tears into the music that is similar to the first track. KRIEG tends to keep the seamless flow of metal together much throughout the album, so expect a lot of lo-fi buzzing and shrieking from much in the same vein on tracks like ‘Ambergeist’ and ‘Dead Windows’.
Of course, KRIEG has its experimental moments that dwell into all the spaces of black metal that could be encompassed, from groove to depressive. ‘All Paths To God’ takes more of groovy, depressive black metal tone that shifts between riffs melodically rather than just hammering out chord after chord. The opening, like so many others, is highly ambient and really matches the creepy mood that KRIEG tries to set on the tone of ‘The Isolationist.’ This is where listeners start to see influence from LEVIATHAN - hence Wrest - in how the drumming is more varied than just straight up blast-beats, and the vocals howl and even crinkle a bit with some electronic effects while the guitars moan and spin out of control like a spiral of madness that settles into an ominous plink of acoustic guitar moments right before everything picks up again, but much more harmonically. This is perhaps KRIEG’s best display of merging beauty and ugliness together. Other highlight experiments are ‘Depakote’ which is full blazing metal like the other tracks for the first and second half, and then during the interlude features a thick industrial sound beat while there is just agonized screams faded into the background. It’s a bit lengthy and stays in the same tempo, but suits the album well. ‘Religion III’ is a great instrumental that has some of the best drumming that possibly could have been done by Wrest himself and lurks around depressive black metal territory with the dark ambiance of programming, along with ‘Remission’, but it is much slower like a depressive march towards the end.
‘Blue Of Noon’ has some great groove to it along the lines of GLORIOR BELLI as it chugs along rather than just full blazing terrorizing. Then there’s ‘The Stars Fell On’ which again keeps more of melodic line to the guitars as they flow without losing any presence of twisted distortion, and then lands the listener with an unpleasant dose of closing white noise distortion that just crawls into the next track like a broken amplifier. By the time ‘The Isolationist’ is over KRIEG will have set a new level for the word “disturbing”. The new line-up really sets the standard for 2010, and despite this breakthrough fans are still left wondering… what’s next? No one knows what comes from the mind of a crazy individual, but at least by KRIEG’s standards it sure is creatively entertaining. Older fans have probably already gotten this the day it came out. New fans will certainly enjoy this if they are open to varied sides of black metal that still encompass a main style… which is that of the extreme side. Expect no keyboards or catchy melodic bits here… just darkness and depression performed at its finest. Go back and listen to ‘Rise Of The Imperial Hordes’ from ’96 and see just how much more different, and better this band has become.
Tracklist
01. No Future 6:27
02. Photographs From An Asylum 5:51
03. All Paths to God 5:00
04. Ambergeist 4:09
05. Depakote 7:17
06. Religion III 2:30
07. Blue of Noon 4:43
08. Inhalation Decays 5:50
09 ... And the Stars Fell On 6:52
10. Remission 3:01
11. Dead Windows 3:42
Line-up
Imperial – Vocals
Joseph Van Fossen – Guitars
Wrest – Bass
Chris Grigg – Drums
Website
http://www.myspace.com/officialkrieg
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 10
Sound: 9
Total: 9.5 / 10
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