The Celtic Winter
| The Celtic Winter | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demo album from Graveland | ||||
|
Publication |
1994 |
|||
|
admission |
December 1993 |
|||
| Label (s) | Melissa Productions, No Colors Records | |||
|
Format (s) |
Audio cassette , CD, record |
|||
|
Title (number) |
7 (3 on the first CD version) |
|||
|
running time |
36:12 |
|||
| occupation |
|
|||
|
Studio (s) |
Wroclaw Studio |
|||
|
||||
The Celtic Winter is an EP by the Polish metal band Graveland . It was released on audio cassette in 1994 through Melissa Productions . The CD version with three of the seven titles released under the same title in the same year was originally supposed to appear on Hammer of Damnation Records, but the record company could not raise the necessary money; as a result, it was released by the No Colors Records label as their first release. In September 2008, The Celtic Winter was indexed together with In the Glare of Burning Churches , Following the Voice of Blood and Immortal Pride by the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People (List B).
Track list
- Intro - 03:16
- Call of the Black Forest - 04:22
- Hordes of Empire - 04:38
- The Night of Fullmoon - 05:32
- The Gates to the Kingdom of Darkness - 06:42
- The Return of Funeral Winds - 8:25 am
- Outro - 03:17
The mini-CD was No Colors Records' first ever release (NC001), it only contains the titles Hordes of Empire , The Gates to the Kingdom of Darkness and The Return of Funeral Winds , the 1996 version (NC010) contains all titles . In the list of publications by No Colors, however, the EP appears under the name Evarg - TCW due to the indexing .
layout
The original cover shows a circle around a heptagon , which surrounds a heptagram , in the middle of which there is again a dog foot . On the other hand, the CD cover shows a photograph of a frozen landscape.
Music style and lyrics
The Celtic Winter was recorded in a professional recording studio and produced far better than its forerunner In the Glare of Burning Churches , but still very harsh. The songs Hordes of Empire , Night of Fullmoon and the Gates of the Kingdom of Darkness have already been released (partly as bonus material) on this demo and were re-recorded for The Celtic Winter .
The EP starts with an instrumental unison; this begins with the blowing of the wind, until after about half a minute a keyboard kicks in, to which gradually louder noises of a battle scene come. The pieces are held in Graveland's mid-tempo style at the time and are partially underlaid with keyboards.
Rob Darken's voice has reverberations . According to John Chedsey of Satan Stole My Teddybear , the Celtic component in the title of the release is probably no coincidence, as the guitars remind him of Celtic Frost's To mega therion . The riffs "drift apart, then repeat the cycle once or twice, dragging the listener into a fantastic realm of poetry and darkness," said Examiner.com's Zach Zimmerman .
In the lyrics, the band deals with incantations and war. It refers to the devil , Lucifer , Baphomet and "unclean spirits" on the one hand and to pagan gods on the other hand, and in the latter context also deals with the revenge on Christians for the killing of witches and druids in the past and for the old gods. With the line of text "Gods of the ancient (aryan) Europe" in the song Call of the Black Forest , the band refers to "ancient ( Aryan ) Europe" and thus to National Socialism .
Reviews
Chedsey compared the sound of the guitars on The Celtic Winter to that of Celtic Frost's To mega therion ; if you need an album as inspiration for your own band, this is a very good choice. His biggest problem with this Graveland release is the knowledge of the later stylistic development of the band towards more epic material influenced by Bathory's Hammerheart album. The Celtic Winter serves as a "decent journey and even an epilogue to Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales, " but is not his first choice if he's in the mood for Rob Darken's "eccentric entertainment." Zimmerman described the release as "an album to get lost in". It is "one of those albums that you listen to for a while and wish it never end," and good enough to have that effect years after first listening.
Akhenaten by Judas Iscariot named The Celtic Winter together with Burzums Det som engang var and Darkthrones Transilvanian Hunger as one of the three releases that were important for the development of his personal black metal ideal. Morrigan's Balor described the EP as a "great release".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frank Stöver: Graveland . The Celtic Black Legend . In: Voices from the Darkside , No. 6, 1995, p. 44.
- ↑ BAnz. No. 148 of September 30, 2011.
- ^ No Colors Records - Releases
- ↑ a b Satan Stole My Teddybear music reviews - Graveland ( Memento of the original from January 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ A b Zach Zimmerman: Blacker than darkness: the top ten of black metal .
- ↑ Al Kikuras: Judas Iscariot Interview ( Memento of January 28, 1999 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Robin: One Should Use a Hardcore Band to Express Politics Through! ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
