Review by Mladen on November 27, 2023.

Yes, brothers, the battle was glorious indeed. Many enemies we have slain and the generations will remember our names with awe. Alas, a treacherous hand has cut us from behind and now we lay in the blood-soaked, smoking field, listening to the women mourning and awaiting our last breath. As we gaze into the dusky sky, strange shapes appear. We have been taught by our fathers that those are ensembles of Valkyries coming to take us to Valhalla, and soon we will feast in the great hall up high... but, wait, aren't those just crows coming to pluck out our eyes?

If all this sentimentality has not made you scroll down to the next review, please keep reading. Kermania is a one-man band from (good guess) Germany, and Ahnenwerk, their debut album, can rightfully be described as a battle aftermath translated into music. Everything from the green cover (with foggy forests and a drawing of a pale warrior), to the music itself, has an aura of something distant, ancient and almost forgotten, re-told so many times that it's impossible to discern where the facts stop and myth begins.

How does it actually sound, then? Not unlike Bathory at their most epic, partly combined with Agalloch and Moonsorrow, but played through an ancient-ness filter, if such a thing ever existed. It's slow, it's fast, it's going through highs and lows, light and darkness, but it's always distant and epic (not to understate "epic" — two out of four songs on Ahnenwerk are 24 and 22 minutes long). The lyrics are long, German and probably heroic.

Though there are some effects like horses, swords, wolves howling and the sounds of nature, all of the atmosphere on Ahnenwerk is, amazingly, created by just the basic instruments — guitars, acoustic guitars, drums, bass and vocals. No keyboards, no folk instruments — but even like this, it's almost too much. Weigand's vocals range from desperate screams to clean baritone singing, with underlying deep, slow, echoing choirs almost being omnipresent. The guitar work is slow, consistent and never purposeless. Just listen to gentle acoustic passages, turning into glassy distorted chords rolling like waves and crushing against the distant landscapes, then going into a thundering blastbeat and back to mourning. Occasional melodies are poignant and instantly identifiable with. Trying to stay indifferent is pointless.

The drums, played by session drummer Alexander von Meilenwald (Nagelfar, The Ruins of Beverast, Abususs) are priceless. Those are REAL drums, with a real sound, without studio polishing, actually played like an instrument, with feeling, and never letting things become stagnant. When you have the same slow chords turned into something completely different by a shift in rhythm, you know you have a winner. Especially with such a range of patterns, from simple or militaristic to progressive, or just playing plain old rattling blastbeats, everything sounds fresh and natural.

Without writing ten pages and spoiling all the surprises, to those still not certain what's all of this about: it's epic pagan black metal. Of the highest quality. If you have any interest whatsoever in this type of music — put your helmet on, saddle your horse and go get it.

Rating: 9 out of 10