This would seem like an appropriate day to review an album entitled 'Frostbite'. The 25th of December has to be deadly cold here in Scandinavia! Yeah! Except...it's actually quite warm outside and nowhere near frostbite potential. Very disappointing and not at all Christmassy!
What is even less Christmassy is the release by Hamburg's King Fear which is forcing its way into my ears via the headphones right now. I've listened to this album quite a few times over the past couple of months now (yes, Christmas vacation is the time of catching up on the heap of albums waiting to be reviewed!), and the thing is that the nature of this type of black metal is that I've forgotten it the next time I listen to it. I KNOW that I've listened to this album six or seven times, but I really can't remember any of the songs upon relistening. And I say to myself, again, that this is most likely something which will be loved by real black metal fans, and that they, objectively speaking, have something about them which is true and good. Nachtgarm, shouter of Negator and formerly of Dark Funeral, is part of this, there must be something to it, for Satan's sake!
This is not ridiculous old school Norwegian black metal, mind you, so at least that can't be held against this trio. Nachtgarm's vocal is of course
tedious at length, but that's kind of a given. There are a couple of instances where I actually like what I hear, for instance the down-tempo midsection of Immortalized, which is really cool, and the melodic riffing of Re-Conquering The Useless.
Not my choice pick, this one, but then again a black metal album I'm not running screaming away from.
