Klabautamann: Our Journey Through The Woods (Re-release)

When last did you hear a 12-string guitar played on a metal album? Or death growls over an acoustic guitar?

German Klabautamann is a two-man project that calls their music " Folk Black Metal". A good description - it's black metal interspersed with an abundance of excellent acoustic passages, yielding a complex piece of metal that will rivet your attention through all of its 51 minutes.  The vocals are death metal growls and the guitar-driven music features complex arrangements running from excellent clean acoustic guitar work through stock-standard death/black metal chord progressions, and several formats between those extremes.

This style of music isn't necessarily ground-breaking- although this is the sub-genre that's advancing today's music more aggressively than any of the other progressive music styles. Klabautamann shares this format with acts like Green Carnation, Agalloch, Disillusion, and others. Opeth loosely falls into this category too - though the style is rather different.

Our Journey Through The Woods Starts and ends with sounds of footsteps through the woods, and thematically, the record is a cross between the Lord Of The Rings and Beethoven's 6th symphony. The Tolkienesque references are found in songs like "Trolldance", "Seaghost" and "Tower of Sorcery", whereas the Pastorale symphony also describes a man's walk through the woods. And the band's name? "Klabautamann" is a deliberately loose spelling of the German "Klabautermann", a mythological merry and very musical water sprite who helps sailors and fishermen in their duties, rescues sailors washed overboard, and predicts shipwrecks.

The heavier tracks like "Seaghost" are standard death metal at the base, with melodic acoustic instrumentation floating over the top. Very appealing. "Elfentanz" showcases the excellent musicianship with three minutes of elegant dual classical guitars with spacey electronic keys in the background, then dives violently into "Tower of Sorcery" - which is pure brutal, classic death-metal. "Spring Morning Sun" is a prime example of the band's trademark shifts from death to perfectly clean music and back in the same song, and "Autumn's Breath" features a wonderful passage with clean acoustic guitars with a distorted electric guitar way back in the mix, which then comes to the fore when the tempo shifts to a harder style. The music is atmospheric, organic, well arranged, and a damned fine listen.

Our Journey Through The Woods Starts was recorded in 2001 and 2002, and this re-release comes courtesy of their new label Vendlus Records, which has "...never taken a dime from any [record] sales for our own personal use. We have worked for free for the label since it's inception". Vendlus Records, along with Klabautamann, deserve success - and they deserve your support.

 

Track Listing:
Intro: Walking through Twilight
Der Nöck
Trolldance
Rabenmorgen
Seaghost
Elfentanz
Tower of Sorcery
This Place
Spring Morning Sun
Autumn's Breath
Total playing time
 

Added: July 31st 2008
Reviewer: Duncan Glenday
Score:
Related Link: The Band's Website
Hits: 2941
Language: english

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