Coldworld - Melancholie²

Coldworld. Melancholie². 2008. 4 stars.

Germany’s Coldworld (aka Georg Börner) has created a highly accomplished black metal album with dense melodic layers and spooky ambient flourishes. While Coldworld clearly fits within the genre with its relentless blast beat percussion and tremolo riffs, its use of symphonic elements and strings (”Tortured by Solitude”, “Escape”) makes this album stand out. In its more atmospheric stretches, Coldworld seem to blend drone, post-rock and shoegaze elements together in well crafted torrents. The clear production work reveals Börner’s talent for composing, drawing in disparate sounds to direct an expressive musical vision. While many of these passages are certainly bleak, they do have a ghostly beauty to them, as distant choral samples and keyborads give off an icy sheen.

Overall, Melancholie² is one of the most effective (and non-ideological) black metal albums to come along in recent months, and carries the same hefty emotional weight as the much gritter Paysage d’Hiver and the more elaborate Wolves in the Throne Room. For its thematic clarity, fleshed-out arrangements and powerful, frosty atmosphere, Coldworld’s first full length is an important gem and easily one of the best metal releases of the year.

Coldworld - Tortured By Solitude

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