Review by Nathan GDL on November 19, 2021.

Paysage D’hiver is one of, if not, my favorite black metal act ever. I listen to this project, religiously. I can call myself a superfan, and there are very few other groups I can say that about (Skepticism, maybeshewill, Rush, Lantlos, to name some). I own just about all the “demos” on vinyl, sans a few and I even bought this one on vinyl too, just out of sheer respect for this project, even if this is the worst, or second worst, of his entire discography.

Let’s start well before release day, with the album being deemed the “debut”, as all of his other releases acting solely as demos. Already that raises eyebrows, perhaps this particular release contains some of PDH’s most immersive and ambitious work? To rival even Steineiche, the crowning gem in his catalogue? 2 hours you say? Hype train is real, and Prophecy Productions really sold it out on this one, pushing that the length of this thing was gonna be a real treat. The last time I was this pumped for a release of this length was with Elysian Blaze’s “Blood Geometry” back in 2012, and that turned out to be a masterpiece. I did not listen to the leak of this album when it came out, after Tobias seemed to have some faith in the metal community by trusting them to not leak one of the most hyped black metal albums of the year. Good one, everyone knows that self-proclaiming metalheads have next to no morals when dealt with this sort of thing anyways, yet I digress.

Tobias gave in, and dropped the first track 'Im Winterwald' which so happens to be one of the best tracks on the album. The main synthline in the middle really sells it, and it was a good choice releasing that one as the single as it really helps sell the album off.

We get into one of the main gripes with this release here, the production. Normally, I like to bully “trve kvlt” black metal nerds by professing my love of Deafheaven and the gaziest of blackgaze bands by shitting on the “necro-sound”, but PDH had a thing going, and for me, aesthetic and visual-ness is important and the extreme lo-fi really helped sell the band to me in the first place. Unfortunately, Im Wald has the cleanest sound on any PDH album by far, and it sounds fucking weak. The drums are too up front, the guitars no longer hide behind the production choices of former giants like the self titled, or Schattengang, but are up front, razor sharp and incredibly brittle. This continued for the entire album.

There are highlights to Im Wald, most notably, probably my favorite song on the thing, 'Stimmen Im Wald', which has a nice layering vocal pattern throughout. That song is a real banger, if I’m being frank, and one of few I’ll continue to jam out to while I clean my room or something.

Further on, I’ve noticed that one of the things that made longer PDH LP’s like Winterkalte or Das Tor so enthralling is the pace. They never felt as long as they were, and they were like 90-minute albums, so longer than normal. If you take the sum of the album, and divvy it all up, usually you’ll have 15–20-minute chunks, give or take a couple minutes, in the case of Das Tor, you have 4 songs, all around 20 min in length, with a nice pace. This album is 13 tracks, and they’re on average, shorter than damn near any other PDH song, which fucks the flow of the album up. There’s no time to build or rest, which the best PDH albums are full of. The climax’s here are weak and rival your freshman penis after fucking the girl who does a really good starfish impression from the dorm next door. There’s no rest, no build, everything feels meaningless. PDH does not simply write 9-minute songs and call it a day.

This, of course, just makes the already long ass runtime even more unbearable, because the flow is fucked beyond repair.

I sound harsh, but I have such a close connection to this band, it’s just dumbfounding the love this album got. It’s as if it was written by a PDH clone.

Wind samples? Check
Minimal ambient interludes? Check
On the nose song titles about winter, being cold, or hanging out in the woods? Check

Another reason I love PDH is that every demo really sounds unique. Kerker is an industrial-esque lo-fi to the fucking max fest, Schattengang is a doomy, death metal inspired meditation, Winterkalte is heavy and blisteringly fast. There’s no identity on this release. It imitates so many third rate atmoblack bands that it’s disheartening as PDH is the clear king of them all.

Crushing disappointment is usually more bitter than hate, so I assume in a few months I’ll be less harsh, but until then, I’m gonna pick a few songs from this thing to bump to and leave the rest. Avoid the RYM elitists who jack off to this thing on the daily, go listen to the violins in the self-titled demo, or the monolithically crushing riffs in Steineiche if you want quality PDH.

Rating: 5 out of 10