Krieg
The Black House

The Black House is like one of those from Strindberg or Ibsen dramas, abandoned and reopened after years: the silence of unspoken tragedies has rotted the walls, dirty, blackened. But the Black House is only the projection of fears and anxieties experienced in the childhood home.

The few notes in the booklet introduce us to the atmosphere in front of the building: the intro, "Deconstructing The Eternal Tombs" with its staggering and repetitive progress shows us its facade: but once inside, we are left to our own devices, nothing to understand, no guide. This sensation is skillfully created through a few stratagems, such as the absence of lyrics, the lack of any explanation... The Black House is a work where unease is generated by silence, by what is unsaid, by constant omission.

This darkness, very abstract and conceptual, is then explained through a series of memories, fragments of a rawness at times truly painful. The tempo, in this first part of the album, is always very fast, with no room for a break or a pause. The inspiration comes from Darkthrone, more raw, reread as the fellow countryman Judas Iscariot had already done. The sound is deep, thanks to great production, providing a sound full of nuances.

Imperial's voice does not provide a clear point of reference: to the lacerated growl alternates a very sinister screaming; but it is in the moments when the tension is higher that the voice amazes, amidst desperate screams, reminiscent of the pain of Abruptum (here authentic though), and counter-choruses with clean vocals that fade into nothing: it's not Lord Imperial singing, it's not the protagonist of the journey lamenting, but it seems the House itself is replaying its grim scene years later. "Fallen Princes Of Sightless Visions..." is the most inspired track from this first half of music, so close to European Black Metal in terms of intensity, yet so far from its stereotypes, from Satanism, from Evil... even the artwork shows this distance: a figure among the snowy trees, in the most inhospitable United States, without face-painting, looks to the ground, holds onto a branch, for support. An image close to everyday life, just like the cover, with that ramshackle hut whose symbolic meanings multiply infinitely.

A brief instrumental, "A Process Of Dying", introduces us to the upper floors of the house: the stairs are steep, the music increases in intensity; the stairs become narrower as you proceed and to the rhythm guitars are first added one, then two, three, a hundred solos: the emotion is intense, like when Raskolnikov faints on the stairs leading to his confession.

The upper part of the Black House is the most musically varied, as here are the rooms, the places where life takes place and tragedies unfold; "Sickening Voices Without Speech" amazes with how it breaks the album: full of mid-tempos, with raucous rhythm, it is a concentration of references to Celtic Frost, to the Panzerfaust-era Darkthrone, distorted in Krieg style. "Ruin Under The Burning Sky" plays on the alternation between various growl tones that Imperial is capable of, while the guitars recall Mayhem’s Deathcrush and Carcass’s Reek Of Putrefaction.

The last songs are a separate chapter: the ninth track, "... Without Light", owes much to the contemporary American scene to Krieg (especially Nachtmystium), with its always very melodic and painful slowness. The tempos significantly lower, the voice becomes a whisper, the clean choruses give the song a bitter tone... Then it moves to a surreal moment, that "Venus In Furs" by the Velvet Underground, here presented very successfully. The piece remains the same in structure, slightly slowed down; Phaedrus, the guitarist, plays Cale's viola for the occasion, intertwining it with a nice bass line, Imperial's voice is abrasive and cutting: it sounds like listening to an old 45 rpm, moldy with time. "Rooms" concludes the album, delicate, among unsettling arpeggios of bass and guitar that create a moment of singular beauty.