Label: Wonder Format: CD
Black Gothic letters and skull graphics in gloss black print on a matte black Digipak (although it’s a shame about the barcode’s intrusion on a white rectangle breaking up the black theme). An opening choral Mellotron drone worthy of Popul Vuh‘s soundtrack to Nosferatu The Vampyr. Will it be the heaviest of doom metal or the most brainpan-shuddering of nasty gothic industrial anguish? Not quite: it turns instead out that Black Earth is closer to a form of melancholy post-rock, brought forth in grand slow style to the brush of unfulfilled percussion strokes and cymbal ripples, paced by a somnolent detuned double bass thrum and scored to the smoky ceilings of cellar-dwelling melodic misery by half-waking saxophone breaths with only the twinkling sparks of the Fender Rhodes to approach the hint of light.
Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore take matters slowly in all things, and the sussurating hiss left to wash beneath the surface is often left to bring the music from one state of dark contemplation into another as the rim-shot percussion strikes up a slow funereal march and back into the droning cessation of prescriptive time. This is not music which holds out much hope of salvation, instead preferring to fall back into the deathly abyss of existential ponderings. With plenty of space between the notes and a sparse sense of the cold presence of nullity underpinning it all, Black Earth draws the listener in on the sad minor scales of a piano played with feeling — feeling down, feeling drawn and wasted. Perfect for the cold weathered nights — or better yet late afternoons when the clouds press down on bare-branched trees — when stark gloom and an icy freshness are best partaken for the welcoming of their absence in the warmth of candlelight and velvet drapes.
-Richard Fontenoy-
