Rein - Rein

REIN - Rein (ATAVISM - MC 2012)

Damn, I was going to review this tape weeks ago, but somehow I wasn’t in the right mood to do anything with it. Shit happens… But I kept listening to the music of Rein, so I guess now it finally is about time to write some words about it. Finally! Rein is another release from Atavism Records, a French label, which releases stuff of bands from their region, which is Burgundy. So far I had a great pleasure to hear an amazing tape from Nefastt, which just blew my head off and also one from Kvalm, which I didn’t like so much, but which surely was a good offer for the maniacs of utterly harsh and violent black metal. And now it’s time for Rein.

I don’t really know much about this band, only that they’re a five piece and “Rein” is their debut demo, which they have released in 2012 (limited to 150 copies only). Musically it is rather harsh and primitive, cold sounding black metal. But in case of Ruin I can say that everything sounds as it should be, I cannot say that this band would irritate me or something, I actually quite like these sounds of raw and filthy, violent black metal. But imagine this music to be very fast or at least mid paced, with the riffage, which have kind of melodic or majestic feeling… and along that crushing, furious tempo or just the wall of epic, majestic, sometimes almost folky riffing you’ll hear some disturbing, kind of possessed, crazy vocal performance… and I don’t know if Geisterber was the only one, who did the vocals, as there are two kind of voices: a harsh scream and deeper, heavier kind of growling… anyway, the result is quite fascinating, as well as disturbing. The lyrics are in French, by the way, what also gives the whole vocal performance a special feeling.

“Rein” contains a couple of Rein songs plus Orthanc cover and intro / outro. I don’t really know Orthanc, which is another French black metal band… Their song, which was covered is titled “732” and as far as what I can see in the lyrics for this song they were very nationalistic kind of band, hailing their forefathers and homeland. This song refers also to the whole Europe, calling it to awake, with some lyrics, which I’ll try to translate: “This is the land of our fathers, our blood, they want to strip… Our culture, our wealth, they are trying to kill ...”. They called it “European black metal”… I must say that the whole concept is very interesting and so is the music of Rein. I doubt it will speak to everybody, as I said it is quite harsh and feels almost chaotic and cacophonous at times, but if you’ll listen to it carefully you may find out that it actually has a lot of killer riffs and just sounds obscure and fascinating.

Final rate: 70/100