Upon the first glance I threw at this release, it had scored the maximum on artwork and presentation. Great band name, great album title, masterful cover photo – all very promising. Boy, I pulled off a serious frown when I couldn’t locate Aderlating on the Metal Archives. That one-in-a-million chance has to occur once, right? Nope, the reason is simple: this isn’t a metal release. I was ready to absorb something epic, black metal oriented and depressive; what I actually got was simply the latter.To be fair, Aderlating’s album is – apart from true noise and speedcore – the most non-musical CD I have ever heard. The two opening tracks are mood-setters but barely effective – were it not for the sake of reviewing, this is where the journey would’ve ended. The listener has no guide throughout these songs; the jingling percussion is repulsive in its lack of logic and natural rhythms. The title track is where the haunting starts: atonal buzzing underlays eldritch tones and tormented screams. It is a haunted maze, the soundtrack of your worst nightmare. Involuntarily, I started thinking of a horror chasing scene in which I’m the next victim – and all human features have long since vanished in the surroundings and the ones hunting me down. Goosebumps, goddamn. There are also drums on this track, well, who had black metal as distant forefather but have seemed to mutate for generations into a wretched, deformed thing. It feels unnatural yet feral – it lures and repulses at the same time. After giving the listener a breath, “Engel der Wrake” picks up the pace again, continuing in an utterly similar fashion.On the one hand, it’s amazing that this music sends chills down my spine. In that sense, it is beyond epic, beyond willful appreciation: it addresses intuition, instinct directly. On the other hand, I won’t listen to the album again, because there is no satisfaction, no pleasure to be had. Noise-ambient fanatics will probably tell you a different story.
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