Style: slow brooding black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: suffering, life is suffering
Thoughts: Black metal is such a peculiar genre. It's hard to think of a sub genre that is more diverse within metal itself. It ranges from blistering speeds to near catchy melodies, even sometimes touching on nearly "happy" and uplifting atmospheres. Witnessing the Dearth is none of those however, this is a cold, dark, slow and brooding take on the genre.
This is also where the paradox of Königreichssaal comes into play. All of these elements; the cold, the darkness, the brooding... all of this should be a boon to the music, but it is not. The cold ends up feeling nearly lifeless. The darkness obscures any direction that the music could be going in. The brooding ends up being more like a meandering than anything.
Every opportunity that the band has with their sound they squander. The elements of a good album are here, but they simply cannot apply them in a way that the music draws me in. The riffs go on for way too long, and don't have any sort of hypnotic quality to them. The atmosphere can be decent at times, but again things dwell and stagnate for far too long and any effect that the music would have on me is lost.
There is the makings of a good album in Witnessing the Dearth, but as it is the music does nearly nothing for me. If the band had been a bit more willing to edit their tracks of some of the repetition, trim the run times down just a little - maybe there would be something here. As it is though the album ends up being a boring take on black metal.
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