Review by Michael on October 17, 2023.

Kicking off their new album Karwoche (Die Sonne Der Toten Pulsiert) with 'Sonne Der Toten' German Nocte Obducta did the right thing. Take no prisoners, just hit the listener straight into the face and make no compromises. Some pretty punching and punkish black metal riffs introduce their 13th (!) album and should draw interest from everybody who likes rough black metal without too many keyboards and all that fancy stuff.

Progressing the song, the structures get a little bit more accessible and melodic but the basic atmosphere is kept very aggressive and frosty. Apart from the harsh black metal tunes, vocalists Marcel and Stefan both sound very disgusting and hateful. In total contrast to this song (and others I will come to later in this review) can be seen 'Karwoche', 'Birkenpech' and 'Schwarzbier Und Feigen'. They are kept relatively calm and almost reserved and especially 'Schwarzbier Und Feigen' reminds a little bit of their pretty strange album Sequenzen Einer Wanderung back from 2008. Especially 'Schwarzbier Und Feigen' has these slight Pink Floyd-ish elements sometimes that make the song pretty chilly and relaxing. In addition to this calm atmosphere come the spoken words instead of singing the lyrics and so you can be sure to be calmed down at the end of the record. Well, you might like it or not, it is the same with dark beer and figs. 'Karwoche' also is pretty atmospheric and calm but has these hateful vocals so there isn't too much oriental stuff to find at all. 'Birkenpech' (“birch pitch” - all botanical nerds know how thick and sticky this stuff is) is the perfect title for the song. It is a very doomy song with a lot of passages where nothing too exciting happens. Maybe an aphid can tell a story about it when it accidentally gets trapped in birch pitch and just waits for its time to leave. But as I said before, there are also some faster and much more aggressive songs on it.

'Drei Gemeuchelte Sommer' is such a fantastic song with much rough energy in it – the riffs are super catchy and melodic though and the vocals match perfectly to the sick lyrics dealing with dead bodies and maggots. Most of the time it is a pure, frosty black metal inferno but on the bridge I often have the feeling to get some old Paradise Lost / My Dying Bride vibes in the lead guitar. 'Conamara Chaos' is probably the most chaotic and also the fastest song on Karwoche. This is pure rage paired with some psychedelic keyboard tunes that somehow makes the song perfect for an evil version of “Alice In Wonderland” eating some magic mushrooms. 'Balder' is with its 9 minutes the longest song on the album and in my ears also the song which is most easy to listen to. It has some galloping drums and a very catchy mid-tempo and even when the tempo increases, it still is not too challenging to listen to it if you leave out the part where the tempo is absolutely throttled down and the whole thing sounds more like some dark ambient song. But fortunately this is just a slight disturbing intermezzo (and Nocte Obducta wouldn't be Nocte Obducta if they wouldn't do such a thing just to make it not too easy) and so the song gets into some more organized structures at the end.

I guess that everybody who likes Nocte Obducta will not be disappointed with Karwoche because they added another very good album to their discography. Maybe it is not the best recommendation for the first date or to chill in the bathtub but you will find your moments when it is perfect to listen to it. Maybe while you drink some dark beer and eat figs with your girl on the second date!

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Review by George on January 25, 2021.

It was a cold day in 1996 when an aspiring Finnish metal musician named Jussi Hänninen decided to start a band with his riffs as the basis, bringing in a few friends to cover the duties he could not. I've covered Fall of the Leafe's debut album in a separate review, and since I rapidly lost interest with each subsequent release I listened to, the only way to go is backwards, to the very first demo.

Storm of the Autumnfall consists of five tracks, three of which later made their way onto studio releases while two remained exclusive to the demo. Compositionally, it's about exactly what you'll find on the debut, pounding, mystical riffs mid-paced riffs that bring to mind long journeys and ancient forests. Two of my favourite tracks from Evanescent, Everfading - 'Starfire' and 'The Garden by the Shoreless Sea' - originated here, and hearing them in their early phases gives a great sense of how the band progressed. The most noticeable difference is in the vocals - Jani Lindstrom clearly had a lot less confidence in his voice at this point, never straying beyond his "default" mid-range screams. They're capable and serve their purpose as a vessel for the poems he penned, but his performance is admittedly generic compared with how varied he is on the full-length. There's no whispers, wails or deeper growls and only one instance of spoken vocals to be found on the whole demo, so this is one department which definitely improved in the time between the two releases.

The timings where the vocals come in also feel slightly off. There's a heightened sense of disconnect between them and the guitars, meaning the demo feels more like two completely separate compositions played over one another rather than one cohesive piece. Crucially, though, that's not a bad thing. For one it adds to the amateur, home-made atmosphere that so many self-produced bands thrive off, and the rawer audio quality only serves to double down on this. At many points you can actually hear the audio skipping out where two tapes were spliced together, so those who find a certain charm in an amateur, thrown-together aesthetic would do well to track this demo down.

Another key feature of this demo that the band would almost immediately abandon is the bass. Unlike Fall of the Leafe's other material, the bass here is absolutely audible and even prominent in the mix, letting you hear new elements of familiar songs. It plays subtly different lines to the guitar and the two instruments complement each other well. An elsewhere unseen dimension to the sound is offered, and that alone makes Storm of the Autumnfall a must-listen for fans of Evanescent, Everfading. From Hänninen's mystical, woodland-evoking melodies that bookend the release to the three elegant forays into Lindstrom's mind between, there's a lot to love here.

Rating: 8.8 out of 10