Schattenfall – Melancholie des Seins

Band: Schattenfall
Title: Melancholie des Seins
Label: Redefining Darkness/Wolfspell Records
Release date: 21 March 2019
Country: International
Format reviewed: Digital stream

Black clouds of despair will sheath your forsaken sky…
Chants of desolation will echo through your forlorn spirit…
Glimmering moonlight will lead your journey towards damnation…
Sorrow’s haze will surround your darkened, hollow universe…

What makes black metal so special to me is its’ wonderful ability to cover so many different domains of “emotions” through its’ various sub-genres. Of course, you want your black metal to be raw, harsh, indignant, brutal most of the times..you want it to give you the sense of the world falling apart..you want total & utter chaos. But sometimes you also need your black metal to let you wander through a universe of nostalgia..you want to just close your eyes and think of the world you left behind…you want to mourn your sense of loneliness and detachment from the life “they” told you to live. Sometimes you just need a little bit of SCHATTENFALL. The name of this band consisting of members from Germany, Austria & Ukraine is very fitting IMO. “Schatten” means shadow and the shadows of sadness, grief, and melancholy will fall over your blackened soul through its’ hypnotizing black metal. Their first album “Schatten In Schwartz” released in 2017 was quite good but not that special. It was still melancholic, sad, depressive but not that “sophisticated” in musical compositions. They said that they wanted their second album to be full of experiments, they wanted it to be more “complex” than their first release & hell yeah they delivered with “Melancholie Des Seins”. More guitar works, more suspense, some captivating instrumentals & some awesome uses of clean voices which complement the atmospheres perfectly. They also changed the vocal from the first album. The new vocal Stefan Traunmüller has this classic sorrowful, soul-stirring sense in his shrieking… like he’s telling some grief-stricken stories from ancient past. And his additional lead works beside the unbelievably talented Vladimir Bauer (Guitars and Bass) have added an extra layer of serenity in this album. If you are looking for soul-crushing, jaw-dropping riffs & bombastic blast beats, this album won’t satisfy you…this is pretty melody heavy & the tempo is pretty mid-paced throughout with some occasional use of blast beats. The drumming of Yuri Kononov is nothing special but it’s tight, compact adequate…sometimes nature just seeks simplicity. This album is almost double in playtime compared to their first album but it didn’t bore me for one moment….every second count. I know the saying about an album being required to listen to front to back is overused nowadays but this really IS an album you need to listen to front to back. You will feel like every track is connected to its’ previous and following track. From the haunting guitar melodies, mesmerizing hits on drum cymbals and then the sorrowful screams that follow in the opening title track, it’s a bloody amazing trip. And that bass solo which starts at 4:35 & carries on till the end…depressive fucken black metal, eh?

The little bestial howling cries they used in “Erst Gar Nichst geboren” reminded me of Animals by Pink Floyd so much. Then comes the first part of the trilogy “Einsamkeit” (Loneliness). I loved that instrumental so much. It reminded me so much of the awesome German Psychedelic Rock scene of the ’70s. I just wish there were a guitar solo there somewhere which never came but they made up for that in “Misanthrop” which starts with some sweet strumming & has some insanely beautiful transitions between chanting, whispering & shrieking vocals too.”Einsamkeit 2″ will hypnotize you with all the spoken words, strumming, awesome fills on drums at the start before the melodic AF black metal attack starts off. This awesome blend of alluring acoustics, haunting melodies, terrifying shriekings, and tranquilizing chants will continue in the following track too.”Ein Riss Durch Alle Leben” is a more straight-forward, fast-tempo atmospheric black metal track before the somber, peaceful, melancholic farewell with the final part of “Einsamkeit”.

This album is an amazing journey with some majestic cross-breeding of psychedelia and black metal.i just wish I could understand the German and Austrian poetry they used as lyrics in this album. But then again..music speaks louder than words. Even though I can’t understand the words, I can feel the grief, sorrow, desolation, emptiness, melancholy, night. I can feel SCHATTENFALL. 9/10 Apollo