Eisregen
Rostrot

In a review of this album I read a rant about banning certain kinds of music that can be seen as offensive, said reviewer wrote that it could be read in the promo info that some of Eisregen’s albums had been banned from being sold in Germany. It did not say anything like that in my promo info for this album so I wonder if we got different info that reviewer and I, but I read of all the chart success from the band’s latest albums and especially Schlangensonne which reached the top 30 on the charts and was well received both by fans and extreme metal press. Guess Hallowed is not extreme metal press but we were not overly positive to that release so for us to approve them Eisregen had something to prove with Rostrot which is a priority release in december for Massacre and the aim should according to the promo info be to get it into the top 30 on the charts in Germany. I have no idea how that went but judging by the success of the previous album it sure looks doable.

Musically it is extremish metal, but quite commercial such. The music is quite melodic and not overly heavy, the vocals are dark and most of the time growly and the influences of goth and doom metal are quite obvious. The production is polished and refined making it a rather easily accessible album for the listener I would say, the vocals are sung in the german language but most of the time that is not something you notice as the vocals blend so well in with the rest of the music on the album that it becomes and element like the drums or guitar rather than something you really pay attention to. This quite anonymous words might also be down to the way the vocals work in a stylistic matter, the variations and the way they are not that high in the mix. The tempo is also quite low on this album and it makes the entire thing feel a bit mellow in style. There are ten tracks on this album and it plays for close to fifty minutes on the regular edition, the limited has an additional track which is a live version of a track on the album.

I would conclude that this album is better than the one that preceded it, it feels less sterile and more alive, maybe the Marienbad project for M. Roth and Yantit has contributed to this as some parts feel quite much alike what we heard on the Marienbad album. The variations is a bit better on this album as well making it feel a little less static than the one before it. Still it does however suffer from the same ailment as the one before it, it is too cautious and threads too much in tried and tested paths. It is good but we have heard it before and it does not offer much that is new to us, sure it is well made and well produced and sounds good and I have nothing against playing this album, I have liked playing it for this review so I like the album. But still, tried and tested is not the recipe for immortality in the musical world, none of the best albums has been walking down well threaded paths and non of the immortal songs have been another one in a style that has been widely used, I have nothing against doing music in established styles but that will rarely really stir up any emotions in me.

With that said I think this is a good album, a clear improvement over the prior album but also a good album in general. It is a bit cautious, maybe to keep the popularity or maybe just out of fear of really changing, trying new paths for the music. It will appeal to the fans of Eisregen and probably to quite many more and it will probably chart like the prior album if it gets the right support. And it is good, it has some nice touches and good songs I just wish that they would have threaded some less threaded paths just to really spice it up because as it is now it is a good album but it never halts you in your stride with something exceptional, something that you weren’t expecting and that is something I expect from the really good albums.