Список групп Black Metal Kistvaen Unbekannte

“Unbekannte” is the first production of the new Romanian Black Metal band Kistvaen, domiciled in the country’s capital Bucharest. It is a traditionally lined up five piece – meaning two guitarists, a vocalist, bass and drums -. Roumania, like most other Eastern European countries is not directly a trend-setter in metal, but every now and then something reasonable originates from the country. And although nowhere near sensational, Kistvaen is just that; Reasonable black metal, with a deeply somber and depressive undertone.
Even when their music is rightly filed as being black metal, some of their tracks however have alien influences like psychedelic, (Most notably the opening track” Reason”) and hard rock, (example: the title track “Unbekannte”). For sure most black metal is not exactly about topics that are generally considered pleasant, but the general atmosphere of Kistvaen’s debut CD leaves a very gloomy, dark and depressive impression.

Most modern black metal tends to be played rather fast, but Kistvaen choses to work with widely varying rhythmic speeds, the first three tracks on the album ranging from slow to very slow, but becoming quite a bit faster in the songs of the latter half of the album. Personally I say that the bands skills come more into its right in the slower going compositions, so quite soon I found myself repeating the first three tracks again and again and largely ignoring the last two ones. Maybe it is just because I have a tendency to like the atypical more than the mainstream, but the more frequent theme changes and interludes of tracks like Unbekannte and Cantitude make a better impression on me than the more streamlined ones like Void and Departure.

The band knows well how to exploit the strength that comes from having two guitarists and their distorted and sharp play is often used to build up a rather dense sound wall, with a prominent and heavy drum peaking out of the background quite impressively. Bass often remains somewhat hidden in the sound mix and mainly provides for emphasizing rhythm. The vocals of Fane are clearly very characteristic black metal ones, most of the time sung in the well known shrieking way, - without however becoming to distorted or unrecognizable -. In the interludes of the first songs the singer however turns to more clear and melodic ways of singing, proving that he is in possession of quite some bandwidth.

This release of October 2010 was presented as a full length production, but with 6 songs only and a total duration of 38 minutes it is rather short and some other bands would probably have chosen to call it an EP instead.


RELEASE, LOGO, ARTWORK AND PRODUCTION

As nowadays has almost become the trend with first releases of new black metal outfits, Unbekannte is self released by the band. In the past such often stood for poor production quality, but with improved technical possibilities more available to everyone, this certainly is no longer so and the label self-released should not anymore be a reason for being biased before actually hearing a production. This de-stigmatization of self released productions certainly helps bands like Kistvaen and many others to scoop out the first necessary steps on their career paths. With the overwhelming number of new bands on the scene in recent years, but declining overall record sales, it becomes more and more normal for record companies to bide their time and only sign up artists after one or more well received self-releases.

The logo under which Kistvaen operates so far is somewhat under par given the high standards that are nowadays applied for such, especially in black metal. It consists of just some pointy irregular, seemingly hand drawn, letters. One good thing about it: At least you can clearly read the band’s name in it, something that has become difficult in more than a few of the now common, highly elaborate designs.

The artwork of the sleeve is also not comparing to the top notch of contemporary black metal, but in a certain sense explains the title of the record quite well. On a background of black there is a black and white pencil drawing, in semi-naïve style, depicting a stylized naked human figure seen from the back, which is making his way on a path through a tunnel-like, dense weaving of gnarled braches. Ahead of the figure there is a circular, bright wide opening, that on the one hand could be interpreted as light at the end of the tunnel, but in all likeliness stands for the “Unbekannte”, the unknown. If it is really meant in such a way is difficult to judge, but to me the scene resembles a lot of what we have got to know from the stories of people who have had near dead experiences. If such is the case, the circular opening as well as the Unbekannte stands for death. Half-sunken into the top of the picture is the band’s logo and at its bottom is the album title in gothic lettertype.

Like I said before “self-released” no longer is an equivalent of poor production, and this album proves it once more. Overall the production can be at least called satisfactory, however without being brilliant. The only exception is the atypical intro-track on which production I say a lot could be improved. But then, tracks of this type are never easy to mix properly.


THE TRACKS

Titled “Reason” the first track of the album clearly is meant as an intro, being totally out of line with the style of the rest of the songs on the album. At 3.30 in length it’s a drone like psychedelic piece with some hardly recognizable whispers, groans and distorted shouts in the background. It would do well as a soundtrack for an entering scene of count Dracula’s castle on a stormy moonless night. Scary, but as said, with a somewhat insufficient production.

Title-track “Unbekannte which follows with a six minute duration, sets the tone for Kistvaen’s main style only so far as the vocals are concerned, which are in a very recognizable black metal style, be the instrumental part is somewhat strange, containing more than one eye wink in the direction of hardrock and not very ‘black” in that. Much more toward the main path of the bands musical concept is the third entry “Cantitude”. At 8.20 it is the longest of the album, quite slow going, with in the beginning still a whiff of the psychedelic, but from its first interlud, -rather quiet, with clear, undistorted vocals -, it becomes real recognizable black metal with slightly speeded up rhythm. Voluminous and bombastic. In my view the best effort of the album.

The only marginally shorter fourth track also not exactly starts out as fast black metal and in a lot of aspects resembles its predecessor. After a short interlude, the song speeds up considerably, with vocals setting in rather late in this second part. Very gloomy and depressive overall atmosphere for the entire duration of the song. The remaining two efforts “Departure” and “Void” are both much faster and resemble more contemporary “mainstream” black metal of the Scandinavian type. You won’t hear me say they are bad songs, but for my feeling they are just a little bit to average and insufficiently distinctive. Especially when listening to Void, I am overcome by the feeling “I heard such before and not just one time”


CONCLUSIONS

Kistvaen managed to come up with a debut of satisfactory solidity and especially the third and fourth tracks gives them some distinction, but in the deluge of black metal of the last few years they can hardly be called outstanding and certainly not groundbreaking. Production is reasonable as is technical craftsmanship, so with a not yet so overcrowded metal market as Romania I guess they will be able to built up a local fan base, but whether their efforts will be enough for international fame…..I doubt it more than a little bit. Overall however not a bad first album, so I give it a 15 out of 20. Let’s see what they manage to follow up with in the near future.