Brocken Moon – Hoffnungslos

artist website

publisher

Northern Silence Productions
Produced by Humanhater

I spent two weeks with this German black metal act’s album thinking that their band name was an embarrassing typo on the much more obvious “Broken Moon,” but thankfully, it is not. Brocken is a mountain in Germany “noted for the optical phenomenon of the Brocken specter, in which a greatly enlarged image appears projected on clouds, and for witches’ revels that reputedly took place here on Walpurgis night.” Alright, I’m sold. That’s an awesome band name.

With regards to their music, on the other hand, I might need some more selling. This is tried-and-true, grim-as-hell, one-man black metal at its most cliché. There’s times when the music breaks the Darkthrone and Burzum-worshiping mold, as in bits of the title track, Hoffnungslos, but they’re sadly few and far between. It certainly isn’t helpful that the strangled vocals don’t sound black-metal-anguished so much as they sound like silly haunted house sound effects meant to frighten small children. There’s an air of goofiness to the whole thing, but unlike say, Satanic Warmaster or Dodsferd, none of it is tongue-in-cheek. Brocken Moon multi-instrumentalist and singer Humanhater is dead serious, and the music suffers under the weight of his misanthropic delusion.

Still, the moments that strive for simple atmosphere are often excellent. The subtle synths that usher in Regen make it easy to forget that the riffs are all lifted from older, better albums, and that the vocals sound like a stuck pig channeling a wookie. The few guitar solos that the album has are excellent too, and one gets the idea that with more of them the album could set itself apart more from its dime-a-dozen basement counterparts across the globe. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to notice the abundance of rainstorm sound effects presumably lifted from a sound sampler that came with Humanhater’s copy of GarageBand and the godawful vocals, and Hoffnungslos ends up feeling incomplete at best, and utterly forgettable at worst.

“ one-man black metal at its most cliché ”

Tracklist: Hoffnungslos / Regen / Kälte / Krieg / Ritual / Einsamkeit / Die Leere

Written by Brad Sanders
More: 2011, Albums, Black Metal, Brocken Moon