Style: Militaristic black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes:
Thoughts: Every time I put this album on I get a huge feeling of nostalgia. This albums structure reminds me so much of one of my favorite black metal albums. It's not that the music sounds too similar, but the way that the songs are ordered and the way that the album flows is so similar that it gives me fond memories.
The album starts out with the incredible epic Der Blutharsch a nearly 17 minute epic. To go through all the twists and turns that this song embows upon the listener would take forever so we'll go over some of the highlights instead. Right at 11 minutes there is a heartfelt guitar solo that compliments the epic nature of the song and drapes this incredibly mournful tone on top of it. The first five minutes of the song are instrumental and they build into an incredible crescendo before the vocals come crashing through my speakers. The final few minutes of the song introduce the first blast beats and add an extra level of intensity, it rounds out the song in a nearly perfect way.
Der Blutharsch is not only an epic song, it displays why black metal can be emotive. This song alone is a huge reason why Alpenpasse is my favorite Minenwerfer album. This song is a ten out of ten, it is something that should be looked upon with reverence.
The rest of the album has significantly shorter songs, however they still range in the eight to twelve minute range. They tend to be a bit more focused on a few concepts rather than the journey that the opening track brings. None of that is bad though, it allows the album to essentially have two chapters, with the opener being the first and the remainder of the album being the second.
The entire flow of the album reminds me a lot of Enslaved's Eld. The first track making a grand statement about what the band is capable of and the rest of the album exploring smaller ideas after. Eld is my favorite Enslaved album by far, and as such the comparisons the Alpenpasse is apt as this shares a similar opinion for Minenwerfer's discography.
Written June 4th 2024.
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