Review Summary: Death? What do you know about death?
Atmospheric black metal is oversaturated with mediocrity and way too many bands. Let's just get that out of the way now. Too often bands are playing the same riffs with too much reverb, repeat it for 40-60 minutes and put out an album full of it. It's tough to be completely innovative in this genre, but listeners need SOMETHING, ANYTHING to grab on to. Grab is an atmospheric black metal band hailing from Germany and their newest album
Kremess will have fans of the genre hiding their massive erections with school books once it's over.
Grab's biggest win here for me is being able to summon the essence of early 90s sounding pagan black metal a la Primordial or Drudkh and put their own modern 2025 spin on it. Most of the riffs here are slower to mid tempo and you’ll find them getting stuck in your head for days. They’re melodic but not too overbearing. They’re also repetitive without getting boring and that's the main reason why you’ll want to keep coming back. These riffs will be calling to you like a medieval peasant begging for a piece of week old bread. The atmosphere here in general is very medieval, as if
Kremess is the soundtrack to a little poor village just waiting to be raped and pillaged into nonexistence by a pack of bloodthirsty rogue knights. The melody from the riffage is a slight glimmer of light at times but it feels like a black rain cloud is hovering at all times ready to dump all over your good time. And isn’t that truly what atmospheric black metal is all about?
The vocal performance is stellar and adds heavily to the atmosphere that I’ve been harping on. They’re mid pitched wails of a destitute and broken man ready to kill for some scraps of food on the dark and dingy streets of a German ghetto. Cries from years of pain and suffering, digging deeper and deeper into the overall gloom of the album.
Like I said initially, atmospheric black metal is all about being able to latch on to something special. Grab gives you at least one riff in every track that you can play in your mind over and over. They give you that suffering atmosphere of darkness and despair and paint a picture of death, much like the album art does.
Kremess will have you feeling like that peasant on the street, ready to say enough is enough, grab his sword and fight till death to protect his family from any earthly danger. This album is like the last piece of the puzzle fitting right where you need it. There’s a method to Grab’s madness and
Kremess will have you lost in that puzzle to the point where you’ll want to play it over and over again.
