Review by Vladimir on July 8, 2023.

This review might be an interesting one, because for this occasion I will be “time traveling” all the way back to 1999. The topic of today’s discussion is the German black metal band Dies Ater and their debut album Reign Of Tempests. Although Reign Of Tempests was originally released in July 1999 via Mordgrimm label, the album was re-released on May 5th this year via Northern Silence Productions, which will also include 6 tracks taken from their 1996 demo Rabenflug. Although I am usually not interested in reviewing reissued or re-released albums, I decided to give this one a go since it’s always nice to see some form of revival when it comes to older bands and their earliest material, especially if it’s coming from the golden age of the 90’s.

Reign Of Tempests begins with an instrumental intro '...Das Erwachen Der Nacht', a beautiful ambient track consisted of very emotional keyboards and pianos, which felt quite nostalgic for me. The track managed to remind me why I fell in love with so many classic 90’s black metal albums which would begin with these amazing intros as a nice build up. As the intro ends, the second track 'King Of Tempests' starts with blast-beats and tremolo picking from the very get-go, while also throwing some melodies and symphonic keyboards as sweet cherry and icing on the top. The harsh vocals join along during the mid-tempo verse, nicely backed up by some tremolo lead guitars. Although the first two tracks were a nice start which promised a lot, the rest of the album fulfilled that promise with each following song.

So many tracks on this album radiate this grandiose feeling of ambience and beauty, which is a result of incorporating all these amazing melodies, symphonic keyboards and nice acoustic guitars which are present on 'Engelsnacht', 'Der Schwur', 'Der Fluch Der Seele'. 'Der Schwur' in particular serves as an interlude track between each half of the album, which is just acoustic guitars, sounds of a medieval battle that was probably taken from a movie and some spoken words in harsh vocalization. The last two tracks 'Rabenflug' and 'Das Geleit...' give the last bit of beauty and beast to create such emotions by adding female singing vocals by Johanna Sadonis. Production-wise it’s a very good sounding album with a mild rawness added to the guitars, which may be some of the better sounding black metal albums from that mid to late 90’s era.

The album could be considered as a product of its time, but I think that after 24 years it still holds up with its overall quality, even though it came around the time when black metal was beginning to drastically modernize while entering a new millennium. I highly suggest that fans of oldschool black metal check out Reign Of Tempests, re-released on May 5th along with the bonus tracks taken from the Rabenflug demo.

Rating: 8.8 out of 10