Review Marienbad - Werk 1: Nachtfall 2011

German band Marienbad have taken their name from the czech town with the same name. A town of which they tell an alternative story as in their story the town vanish but in reality it is still there as a famous spa resort which it has been for many years. The town of Marianske Lazne, or Marienbad that is the German name for it was also for a brief period in time held by the Germans and was part of the region called Sudetenland. This was during the second world war when the man inspired by Charlie Chaplin was leading Germany. The germans were after the war and stripped of their citizenship and left with only what they could carry (the germans treated the czechs more or less the same before the war) some indications were that they were forcefully relocated but I don’t know as most of the internet information about this was in German or Czech and I speak neither of those languages in a manor that can be considered any good, but that is what I found out about that thing. It appears that this story is something that is often forgotten in the information about the spa resort.

Marienbad in the story that takes place in the sixties is to be drowned in order to make a water reservoir, probably for a dam. I who live near several dams and have visited many of them can clearly state that there are often some really big water reservoirs for those power plants and they are sure to drown a lot of landscape when they are created. The people of the town are of course being relocated before all of this, there are however a group of twelve who decides to remain and commit suicide there rather than face an uncertain future at another location. I as a conspiracy theorist can clearly draw some parallels between the real story of Marianske Lazne and the fictive story of Marienbad which is the same place, maybe the relocation is still a political thing amongst some of the germans and maybe czechs as well but that is something I will not speculate in as it seems to be a story most want to bury somewhere deep. For me it is the story of the concept that matters anyway.

Musically it is gothic, dark, doomy and sung in two different languages so you can decide to pick up a version sung in german, or maybe one in english or both if you like that, there will be a limited edition with both languages in a cooler bigger box if I am to believe the label. I think that this band reminds me a little about The Vision Bleak which is a band I really like, they feel like a one dimensional Vision Bleak as they do not feel as rich in their sound as aforementioned band. They also share producer in Markus Stock with that same band. There are eight tracks and 45 minutes of music on both discs and I would say that the singer is not very good at speaking english which can be seen as a slight drawback, the German sung version feels a bit more comfortable in the lyrical section. Still, the two version are more or less identical so I think it is more of a language preference than anything else if you are to chose version.

It all starts great with Komm Nach Marienbad or Come to Marienbad which paints a story of fall time with a long time of almost constant raining, it is wet and muddy everywhere. Raincoated army men arrive to relocate the inhabitants of the small town but Roslin and her children as well as a few more refuse to go with them an remain behind. It is all dark and a little feel of Silent Hill in atmosphere but then I come to lose interest as the minutes go by and for all I care they could just have been shot by firing squad I just feel that I cannot care for the characters or the story for more than a few songs. I think this has to do with the album lacking in variation, the songs are build on the same foundation which is nothing wrong. They are also very similar and if I go through the german and english version in one burst I tend to loose track of where I am after a short while not even aware if I am listening to the english or german version which is not a good thing.

The main sound is good though and the potential is there and I also think that there is not really that much standing in the way for this to be really good. I think though that it ends up being more atmosphere than substance which is not really what I want even though I like the atmosphere on this album. It is good, no denying that but the sense is that it could have been so much better and instead of a really good album we end up getting a good one. My lasting impression after writing this review in english now is that it was good that the town was drowned as I didn’t like it anyway, it sounded like a dark and morose place.

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Marienbad Werk 1: Nachtfall

Marienbad
Werk 1: Nachtfall