As a bit of an old school Black Metal guy, I normally steer clear of anything labelled as DSBM as it conjurs up images of social media trigger warnings & edgy teens donning Lifelover T-shirts and praising the genius of Niklas Kvarforth, however I decided to open my mind for a change and bite the bullet (see what I did there?).
Germany’s ‘Coldworld’ have been around for a long time, forming way back in 2005 and releasing an EP, a demo and an album over the course of 3 years before aptly disappearing, only to return with 2016’s ‘Autumn’ release. Over that time the aforementioned debut EP ‘TheStarsAreDeadNow’ had reached a level of acclaim, so much so that it has now been repackaged and re-released by the highly respected ‘Eisenwald’ label.
As this was my first foray into Coldworld and ‘DSBM’, I have to admit there were biases and I’m pleased to say most of those biases have been well and truly dismissed, at least for this particular artist. Very little of what I was expecting was found here, instead I was met with some wonderfully diverse compositions that were sometimes bleak, sometimes epic & inspiring and dare I say, in the case of the track ‘Hate’, sometimes worthy of headbanging. The 7 minute instrumental track ‘The Old Ghost in the Well’ is a beautiful score which brings to mind Burzums ‘Filosofem’ album, complete with dripping water and synths. My only issue with the release, is that the tracks don’t seem to glue together coherently, which makes it sound a little more like a compilation album than a solid piece. All in all though, I’m happy that I gave Coldworld the chance, because this is a genuinely good record and an artist that I am definitely going to give more time to.
