Every now and then an album comes along and blows you away. A piece of musical, muscularity arrives and shakes you and your current state up. This has happened in the form of SCHAMMASCH latest release. At only 6 songs and 51 minuets in playing time it’s here to demand your full, undivided attention!! Strap in people as its alive, rich and complex.
SCHAMMASCH are presenting album number 6, after 5 outputs that have interrupted the metal community. It feels like a new devise of storytelling; it’s truly unique, vulnerable and atmospheric, it’s like these artists are being so open and honest about their lives, uncertainty of worth and the damage that is growing in the outside world.
‘if you can, on listening to what I already regret offering you, be as calm as I, and do not blush at the though of what the human heart is.’
This opening monologue warms us with what this will entail. The narrative only gets more bleak, more demoralising and yet more compelling.
CRYSTAL WAVES, opens the record with the sounds of the natural world expunging its existence with an unflinching comment of how we all struggle, and all change and inevitably fall. The simplicity of the guitars sounds like the saddest offering a band have outpoured this year. The songs builds and builds and allows you to really feel the words and adoration towards the outside world, it feels like a lesson of growing old.
‘Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow. Who loves today and hates tomorrow.’
This songs is over 13 minutes long and needs to be on repeat as it reacts to truly feel the colours that omit and grow inside the listener. The drums are sounding clear, precise and the repetition just fills the desperation in the song. It’s unpredictable essence doesn’t give up during the whole song, those keys 5 minutes set the tone and allow the shift to occur in the later part of the song.
Track 2 shifts tone and pace straight away, A SOMBER MISERY, a slow and stripped back moment that allows the dust to settle from the previous song.
Track 3, YOUR WATERS ARE BITTER, 9 minutes of terrifying, fast paced, throat grabbing music that never lets up, that riff allows you to truly feel the weight when it kicks in. The vocals are rough, desperate and punchy. Again, the narrator feels like they are warning us,
‘Unable to grasp but a glimpse of the voidness that is to be his sorry fate.’
You can sense the demise is near, the drive is on full speed and the tension just deepens as the band get focused on the motivations.
But, the real weight comes from THEY HAVE FOUND THEIR MASTER, at over 10 minutes long this is where the band really fall into the work, the story telling and the utter brilliance of what this band can create. It feels like a wild tornado expanding in every single way. The vocals explode 2 minutes and 30 seconds in and we are deep in their world
‘For even the most advanced among your instruments have recognized it to be inaccessible, and thus mankind does not have permission to enter.’
You can’t not get wrapped up In this creation, the drums build, the pace feels a deep, tense atmosphere and the vocals shift. The backing vocals seems to assist the main vocal that creates more width, mored depth for the listener. The last 90 seconds make hairs stand on end, it truly feels like the end of more than just this song.
This record doesn’t seem to want to live in the background. It deeds the listener to really experience its weight, its narrative and the true essence of metal.The soft moments are beautiful, image of the infinite, will treat you heart and your mood. Again, an example go how soft, gentle metal can be, we sense the demise is near, the drive is on full speed and the tension just deepens as the band get focused on the motivations.
I HAIL YOU, OLD OCEAN, the closing track of the record goes back to the fast paced, the guttural vocals and the chorus singing we found in earlier tracks. It’s higher in pitch and the drums sound fresh and sharper in previous songs.
Do not let this album pass you by. A fresh, powerful and fine record that will easily sit within my top 10 of the year. Get it on!!
REVIEW 4/5
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