CoC : Nargaroth - Geliebte des Regens : Review

Nargaroth - _Geliebte des Regens_
(No Colours, 2003)
by: Matthias Noll (7 out of 10)

My initial reaction to this record was to immediately visit eGay to determine if I could sell it for the amount of money I spent on it. The music on _Geliebte des Regens_ seemed to fulfill all promises made by some of the worst cover artwork I've seen in recent years. Dig the lightning flashes! Who came up with this idea, Beavis, Butthead or the skinny idiot from HammerFall? The musical content of _GdR_ is easy to desribe. Compared to previous Nargaroth material this sounds like an even slower _Raluska Part II_, with the same excellent and suffocating sound but fewer riffs and songs that that have thrice the length but hardly any dynamics. The questions every potential buyer of this record should be able to answer with a straightforward "Yes" are: Are you absolutely sure you're going to dig three plodding and very similar tracks each between eleven and seventeen minutes with at maximum three or four fast strummed riffs? Are you positive you can even enjoy one of the main songs played once again in a supposedly different version (no, I haven't yet discovered what the differences are)? Can you deal with a Nargaroth record which has almost nothing in common with _Herbstleyd_ or _Black Metal ist Krieg_? Even then _GdR_ remains a difficult affair. I do believe it's possible to force yourself to like it but not without some effort. Listen to it on a miserable, rainy day, three or four times in a row (the equivalent of four to five hours) and you might get to a point where it starts to make sense, sink in deeper than before and stay there. Nevertheless I bet there are only a few people out there who will wholeheartedly call this an excellent album. Kanwulf himself has supposedly been so moved by his material that he cried while playing. Although I've come to enjoy _GdR_ a lot more since I got it, I still can't help wondering if he was in tears because he was strumming for fifteen minutes already and forgot how to stop. Of course repetition and monotony are core ingredients of black metal to put listeners into a hypnotic trance but seventeen minutes with hardly anything going on can be close to eternity. As strong, sincere and deeply melancholic the emotions that led to _Geliebte des Regens_ might have been, the attempt to adequately express them through music has not been 100% successful.

(article published 13/12/2003)

ALBUMS
7/12/2004	M Noll	5	Nargaroth - Raluska Part I
3/13/2001	A Wee		Nargaroth - Amarok