Todtgelichter – Rooms (Review)

This is the fifth album from Todtgelichter, who play progressive/avant-garde black metal.

Rooms comes across as a combination of Enslaved and Madder Mortem, with a side-order of some of Arcturus‘ work. The resultant mix reminds of a post-black metal version of Obscure Sphinx. Which, considering who good Obscure Sphinx are, is an exciting proposition.

The music generally fuses elements of all of the aforementioned groups into a cohesive whole. Progressive structures, post-metal reflections and avant-garde deliveries are all tied together with a professional delivery and top-quality recording.

These songs take the time they need to gradually unfurl, breathing into the space they occupy with ease. There’s an abundance of ideas and interesting aspects to the band’s music and it’s a lot to take in the first time you listen to it, which just urges you on to listen to it again.

The very able singer uses a combination of blackened screams and strong cleans to deliver her dark messages to the world. Her screams are done very well, but it’s her clean singing which really does it for me. She has an extremely good voice, with a despondent edge to it that lends it weight, but without becoming overly maudlin so that she robs herself of power.

Well holy crap if this isn’t going to make it onto a lot of end of year lists. At least, it really, really deserves to. It’s just so good. The only problem, as always, is one of exposure; how many people are realistically going to listen to this? Well, I think that once you hear it, you know you have a duty to tell people about it and how good it is. So, with that in mind, off you go – go forth and spread the word of Todtgelichter.

Essential for all extreme metal fans.