Karg is the solo creature of V. Wahntraum, also known as J.J. within the excellent Harakiri For The Sky: a troubled project in its ten-year winding, as well as the personality of the musician who leads it and that, after various vicissitudes, even personal, seems to have found today a new dimension with the release of this beautiful Weltenasche. After the first records, marked by a black metal with wide ambient nuances first, and then depressive, the Austrian musician has come to a form that only apparently can be considered more canonical but that, if anything, is only more effective and able to hit the mark without having to go through different ways. It’s difficult, in fact, to come across a work so long and yet devoid of moments of fatigue or fillers: even when our slow down or vary the cruising speed, indulging in acoustic moments or more rarefied, everything seems perfectly inserted in a compositional design focused on a constant emotional exchange between musician and listener. On the other hand, it’s perceptible from the intensity of the songs that, except for the acoustic Spuren Im Schnee, are marked by a crescendo of pathos, a mix of anger, desperation and resignation, as in Weltenasche there is nothing constructed, being each note the natural outlet of the creativity of a tormented soul. Sometimes it even seems to listen to a version with a more exasperated impact of the first works of Alcest, where dreamy melodies blend fluidly with the blast beat outbursts (Solange Das Herz schlägt…), in other moments is a poetic afflatus to take the scene (MMXVI/Weltenasche) but it is mainly a liberating reaction to an inner discomfort that prepares the ground for beautiful songs like Crevasse, Alles Wird In Flammen Stehen and …Und Blicke Doch Mit Wut Zurück. It’s certainly not the musical genre that makes the musician, but if anything the opposite, and black metal will always have a sense and, above all, a very long life, as long as it will be interpreted by those who possess the compositional sensitivity of V. Wahntraum.

2016 – AOP Records