Slartibartfass – Schwarz Verhüllt

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Quite often bringing traditional folk instruments into metal gives the music an additional dimension. Other times, such moves don’t bring much to a band’s music, though, and in fact are a detriment to the finished result. Such is the case with Slartibartfass’s Schwarz Verhüllt. The band’s latest – a concept album – starts off rather well, distinctly heavy metal that benefits from some raspy Germanic vocals, heavy guitars and the odd blastbeat. The vocals perhaps feel a bit jarring against everything else, but mostly it is good, riff-heavy blackened metal. The band’s use of two other elements though – synthesizers and, typically for a German band, bagpipes, don’t really sit well with the music. Some of the songs use the synths well – Trauer uses them in a more traditional symphonic black metal band, at least some of the time. Otherwise, at best both they and the bagpipes sound like an arbitrary inclusion, at worst they sound like a cynical bid to make the music more ‘interesting’ but in doing so just get in the way – either way, it comes across as neither pleasing nor inventive. Naturally whatever concept the band are going for is a bit lost amidst the German lyrics, and perhaps there is an interesting story being told that is relayed better with the science fiction keyboards juxtaposed with the historical bagpipes. Or, maybe, this is a bunch of random ideas thrown into a studio and the result is what is heard. Take out the vocals, most of the keyboards and the bagpipes and this would have at its foundation a really good metal album – but as it stands it is flawed, and perhaps not interesting enough at its core to overcome its fallacies.

Written by James Donovan
More: 2011, Albums, Black Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Slartibartfass