Some bands have history. Freezing rain has Tradition. Core members Yantit and M. Roth have been terrorizing Germany for nearly 30 years, managing to get two of their albums restricted in their home country and two others banned outright. BzKJ dropped the hammer because their lyrics are just plain fucked up, with graphic gore scenes, necrophilia, incest and more. I don’t think the German government has ever heard of Slam, otherwise the list would be a lot longer. Although I caught them boasting about the words “Slam” and “Slam of the Year” in one of the World’s 1000 Greatest Movies I made in the 1970s, I grappled with the words “Slam of the Year” and “Slam of the Year.” Freezing rainThe nickname has appeared a few times on the internet, but only now did I get around to testing out her proprietary brand of perversion. How does variety compared to its 15 (!) predecessors?
Nobody has time to listen to a discography of this size to review a single album, but a quick glance suggests that Freezing rain is clearly one of those band that can’t fix what isn’t broken. Three parts gothic metal, two parts black metal and one part death metal, the music is more simple than uninitiated people like myself might have expected, in contrast to the level of cheering the band seems to have generated. With hoarse, breathy croaks, the band sketches out nightmarish stories like Mary Shelley living to 11 years old, without overt aggression or grandeur. Restrained piano and violin provide a certain haunting atmosphere and the necessary catchy tunes to keep the pieces interesting even beyond the disturbing lyrics. This is important because you have to speak German to even understand them.
But while my expectations were tempered, I was pleasantly impressed by varietyThe songwriting is simple and not particularly dynamic, sticking to basic structures without any significant development in tempo or mood, but Freezing rain is captivating on many different levels in the varied track list. Wistful melancholy outlines “In the blood-red room”, but the wild “Hinterland” is permeated by a Finntroll-like feeling of mischief. “Schöner sterben” is straightforward Gothic Doom in the style of The Lost Paradisebut “Live Bait” is closer to the theatrical Gothic black of Cradle of dirt or Carach Angren. M. Roth’s croak is appropriately exaggerated, he exaggerates the evil characters he embodies with highly entertaining glee and exaggerated enunciation, but he can be surprisingly sonorous with his clean voice, reminiscent of Till Lindeman (Rammstein).
But it can be difficult to completely get off autopilot when you’ve been releasing an album every two years on average for three decades. Freezing rain doesn’t entirely escape the feel of a formulaic composition. The vocals are great, but aside from the neat asides, they have a tone and intensity throughout most of the album. The verse-chorus structures are fine, but with the pace and variety within the pieces, the music can become predictable at times. The attempt at an epic closer, “Dead Body Art,” doesn’t have enough going for it to fill its 10 minutes. The result is an album that’s fun to listen to, but lacks the spice to develop beyond that.
Nevertheless, with the law of diminishing records in mind, variety finds Freezing rain in better form than most bands with a double-digit discography can claim. Despite the overlong finale, there are no real duds here, both atmosphere and hooks are plentiful and very entertaining. Even the production is well above industry standard, although the vocals are too far forward in the mix. As for the lyrics, the ones I translated are very entertaining, self-contained horror stories, like a serial killer with a bolt gun and a murder-suicide by embalming, so German audiences might get more out of this. But monolinguals shouldn’t be put off by that, because variety is an entertaining but unpretentious little slasher anthology that will make a great Halloween soundtrack in a few months.
Evaluation: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Verified format: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Massacre Records
Sites: kkth.de | facebook.com/eisregen.official
Publications worldwide: 16 August 2024
