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EgoNoir - A New Philosophical Thunder review



Reviewer:
6.8

4 users:
6.75
Band: EgoNoir
Album: A New Philosophical Thunder
Release date: April 2009


01. A New Philosophical Thunder
02. In Dunklen Hallen
03. Vergänglich
04. Winter Is My Name
05. Was Unseren Geist Fängt

Germany has quickly taken the lead in the Depressive Black metal movement, with more one-man-projects popping out each day than zits on a teenager's face. Burzum's influence reigns surpreme, but there are a few bands out there that try to go beyond simply generating a third-rate copy of "Filosofem". With varied results.

EgoNoir is one of those projects and in itself the embodiment of the German scene. One of the one hand you have the highly teneous choirs, the calm and unearthly clean male vocals, a classical music-driven grande finale et cetera. On the other hand we have generic screechy vocals, razorsharp riffs that hardly impress since they've been done an inexplicably large number of times already, paired with monotone pounding on the skins. A shame really, because EgoNoir is definitely not a bad initiative. In fact, on numorous occasions the music is actually good. But alas, the band can't keep that up for the full thirty minutes that "A New Philosophical Thunder" is long and is ocassionally found in the pitfall of Depressive Black metal with its lame riffs and boring attitude.

Since I haven't heard any previous releases of this band, it's impossible for me to speculate on their future. While the execution is up to par and the ideas are there, you would expect a band that has been going for 13 years to have a more original sound. Unless you were never going for that in the first place. "A New Philosophical Thunder" is far from a new philosophical thunder, but it's a fresh breeze at least...


Rating breakdown
Performance: 7
Songwriting: 7
Originality: 5
Production: 6





Written on 22.06.2009 by If you're interested in extreme, often emotional and underground music, check out my reviews. I retired from reviewing, but I really used to be into that stuff.


Comments

Comments: 2   Visited by: 81 users
22.06.2009 - 20:16
Ag Fox
Angel No More
"far from a new philosophical thunder" such a cool phrase... another reason for me to read the reviews here... to improve my English
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loves 小巫
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23.06.2009 - 14:26
Vermin

I quite liked this release actually. Especially the oldschool horror/sci-fi theme on "Winter is My Name", and the vocals, although tragically comic on first listen, grows on you, and fits the music so well. It's like taking the original idea of Mayhem's deathcrush and taking it one step further.

Although the underproduced pre-programmed drums doesn't really suit it. Only Lifelover has been able to pull that off so far.
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