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Rating: "Der Sieg des Lichtes ist des Lebens Heil!", released in 1998, is the second album of the Der Blutharsch project: a truly mature work where Albin Julius is able to reorganize his ideas and better develop the insights that were only sketched in the still good debut.
What is immediately evident is that the unexpected success of the self-titled debut (which, it should be remembered, was originally conceived for fun, for the use and enjoyment of a small circle of friends) seems to have emboldened the good Julius and expanded his incredible audacity immeasurably.
So much so that "Der Sieg des Lichtes ist des Lebens Heil!", along with a few other samples ("Music, Martinis and Misanthropy" by Boyd Rice, the "Gospel" by Blood Axis, "Take Care and Control" by Death in June), is rightfully listed among the most fascist albums in the history of (more or less) known music.
That Julius is a shameless character is apparent from the odd idea of opening immediately with a crappy 1930s song sung in German: a programmatic manifesto, a gesture of absolute arrogance, a clear provocation that clearly spells out what we should expect from the fifty minutes that make up the work in question, namely a passionate apology for the totalitarian regimes that tragically marked the history of the twentieth century.
Once the entertaining interlude is over, the solemn notes of an organ prepare us for the real dance. As they say: the calm before the storm. What follows will be an uncompromising assault of threatening orchestrations, thundering percussion, and industrial samples: a mixture of ingredients that will form the basis of what will become a genre in its own right, a kind of martial post-industrial with dark warlike settings.
Many would later unsuccessfully try to imitate the content of this album, perfect in its finishes, enviable in the balance of its components, evocative in its environmental passages, as much as adrenalinic in its moments of greater declamatory impetus.
The dramatic charge of the first album, in truth, diminishes (and this is a negative note in my opinion) to make room, alas, for a warlike pride that has no equal, for intensity and conviction, even within the same scene: courage, honor, virility, spirit of self-sacrifice, hero worship.
And certainly, some flashes of irony are not enough to tone down the threatening tones, the ostentatious pride, the blind violence of what we can define as the perfect vade mecum of today's young fascist, a rather detrimental character who for years lived in the shadows and resentment, and who recently seems to have found a way to emerge from his alcove lost in the nostalgia of a disastrous past.
The other day, at the newsstand of the train station in the city where I work, I saw for sale, prominently displayed, the 2009 calendar of Benito Mussolini. Until some time ago, such a thing was clearly inconceivable. And then I wonder, not without self-criticism, if it was not bad that the revisionist phenomenon was not extinguished in its birth, in every small and insignificant manifestation.
Today, this phenomenon seems to have gained strength and audacity beyond all control and decency. It is probably the fault of the ignorance and superficiality that permeate the present: for this reason, an album like "Der Sieg des Lichtes ist des Lebens Heil!" will serve for posterity as a vivid testimony of the idiocy and uselessness of the years we are living.
The nineties, the two-thousands: while an empty and unscrupulous financial economy was fooling us, stripping the real one; while an epochal crisis was being prepared to reap a system now destined to collapse, we will be remembered as those who were getting screwed and had both good taste and time to reevaluate the never too reviled totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.
Gentlemen, we will be satisfied: totalitarianism will return, and not even in a very gentle way. In other forms surely, but always pressing the same levers: ignorance, despair, idleness, indifference.
And if you come to ask me why in light of all these beautiful words I still find myself giving four stars to a Blutharsch album, I don't know what to answer.
Perhaps because (probably mistakenly) I can still forgive everything to "art".
Perhaps because I have lost critical sense, the measure of things.
Perhaps because my brain has definitively gone to the dogs, shapeless, inconsistent, and schizophrenic, a home of opposing and contradictory forces, subjected from a tender age to the deadly blows of Tigerman and Fist of the North Star, of Forum and Lunch is Served.
The Big Brother and De Filippi arrived late, at an advanced stage of decomposition: desolation was already there.
Tracklist and Lyrics
02 II (04:29)
(...)
The said the war is over but I don't believe it. No one told me it was over, no one that was in the truth told me it was over. All the liars with down the road said it was over but... no one that I knew that was telling me the truth said it was over. So I guess it's not over as far as I'm concerned.
Fallen wir!
(...) killed though (...) car crash down the (...) garbage down the road (...) trash (...) distant ship (...) don't want to get involved (...) take up a gun (...) I mean (...) all the (...) where did you go along (...) spiritual movement in this world (...) got out of prison (...) they don't have enough (...) last American (...) United States, and the United States can't even forgive their own children, for doing exactly what they raised them up to do?
07 VII (02:09)
But first, let's remind ourselves what the fundamental rights of an independent nation are.
Blood Nation.
Blood Nation.
Arrgh!
Herzum
A Herzum
A Herzum
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
Light (...) night sky (...)
Dreaing of the ever-night
War we came and war we kept
Wotan unser stand the hill
Herzum
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
(...) schleben (...)
(...) the World of (...)
(...) play
(...) ist to late.
Herzum
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
09 IX (05:06)
(...) über klar, das wir lager vergannt erst ist. Aber, wir sind soldaten, ob bleiben oder sterben. Wir mützen for der Gesichter for antworten ob unser plicht erhaben! Junge soldaten, erst einsatz bliegen sehen und wissen. Das unser Batallion nür ein powehrks kennt. Niemehls ein zurück. Unser Batallion kennt nür Kampf!
Kampf, Sieg oder tot!
(...)
(...)
(...) [Sampled from Triumph of the Will]
12 XII (03:37)
Was ist das Wunder!
(...) who's there? (...)
(...) [Sampled from The Wicker Man]
(...) für Millionen! [Sampled speech by Hitler]
15 XV (02:56)
But first, let's remind ourselves what the fundamental rights of an independent nation are.
Blood Nation.
Blood Nation.
Arrgh!
Herzum
A Herzum
A Herzum
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
Light (...) night sky (...)
Dreaing of the ever-night
War we came and war we kept
Wotan unser stand the hill
Herzum
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
(...) schleben (...)
(...) the World of (...)
(...) play
(...) ist to late.
Herzum
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
A Herzum (Forgive my despair)
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By caesar666
The music continues to maintain its explosive charge intact.
An undeniably important group in the neo-folk and martial realm whose sound has gained many followers.
