Review Summary: Ironic gloom.
Are you ready for a cliché? Well, it’s winter. What kind of image strikes to mind? Snow? Candles? Santa Claus? Obsessively shopping for gifts in a crowded mall while trying (in vain) to feel just a little bit excited for Christmas? All I know is that when crystals of ice paint the landscape as white as only snow can make it, ColdWorld’s captivating debut will be going on repeat until it thaws. I’m glad to notify anyone who shares my passion for depressive black metal that this is most probably your lucky day.
Melancholie2 is in good company. However this time around, melancholy is exchanged for wind at the bottom of the cover. The main source of inspiration for the making of this record has indeed left a considerable share of evident clues. Like that of
Melancholie2, depressive black metal’s established qualities are bloated with ambiance and careful touches of string arrangements, clean vocals and electronic elements. A constant sense of gloom bleakness runs throughout a record that has an ironic and queer tendency to convey sensations quite unlike that which its poetry would suggest. Speaking in metaphors, I’d like to observe
Wind from a perspective veiled in a slightly more poetic (and infinitely pretentious) spirit. The shade of death greets the one who drift in transcending slumber. He dims the agony and bestows the last breath with a stream of warmth before the light finally fades. Dejection has, like an evolutionary instinct for utilitarian survival seemingly resulted in a warm, numbing blanket that shrouds the drifter in a grey area to keep it from harm.
Wind does indeed bear the name of apathy and it's an interesting contrast. Soothing ambient passages most evidently found on "Through The Shining Stars" illuminates the album's generally quite raw character but not even in its coldest moment does the light grow faint. The music is cloaked in ethereal stillness. It's not of aggressive nature rather than one of distressed grief and misery. Every passage has been channeled through great attention and awareness by someone who doesn’t stray from having creativity and curiosity directly affect his work.
Depressive black metal is an interesting genre. If art is the creative image of man I’d like to declare the right to say that this type of music fulfills an ideal purpose. Some people even claim that quality of art can really only be measured with how emotionally attached we feel to what we observe. Art and expression is bound to relative guiding principles. It’s a reflection of the relative mind like that of human beings, which is why we understand the variable in loving bands seemingly without talent in parallel to groups that in harmony with the taboo “objective” sense should present as superior. Bathory is my favorite band, which in consent with such a thesis can be justified before self-important elitists that marvel at the fact that I would confidently place Opeth second. We are neither mechanic nor one dimensional; therefore art and music must be alleged by the same judge. I yield to whether or not something by rational standards is recognized as superior in case something of entirely different nature happens to affect my emotions. And that’s just what Melankoli’s
Wind and atmospheric black metal in general does for me. A fantastic debut, warmly recommended.
