Curtain’s up for Folterkammer.
After a debut album at the end of 2020, the band comprising Andromeda Anarchia (vocals), Zachary Ezrin (guitar, Imperial Triumphant), Darren Hanson (guitar), Brendan McGowan (drums, Coffin Sore, Papacy, Godless Tyrant) and Laurent David (bass) sign to Century Media Records for the release of their second album, Weibermacht.
The band opens with the provocative Anno Domina, a composition in which the vocalist’s dark operatic voice strides over catchy riffs and slow, majestic orchestrations. Everything about this track sounds as coherent as strange, like the baroque break followed by the cracking of whips before giving way to the disquieting Leck Mich! where clean vocals and growls cohabit under an effective and sometimes more virulent rhythm, especially on the choruses. Old-school influences easily join the keyboards before calming down on Die Unterwerfung, where the calm introduction allows us a moment’s respite before saturation reasserts its authority alongside the vocalist, who leads the waves of fury as she sees fit before bringing the sound to a screeching halt. Kuess mir die Fuesse comes next, gradually surrounding us in this opaque melancholic shroud before periodically igniting it to bring aggression and mystery to life. The composition is relatively long, allowing the band to weave its weighing atmosphere that eventually becomes terrifying under the German shouts, but Algolagnia temporizes by presenting its heady melodies under a heavy basis before the banshee returns to haunt the composition. The sound remains very rhythmic, following the blaze of this macabre play which joins the cutting Herrin der Schwerter and its more impressive patterns which meet infernal choirs to complete the usual sweetness. A new moment of gentleness unveils Das Peitschengedicht, but the poetry soon becomes more vindictive, revealing the full extent of its contrast under an impenetrable blast, before the album comes to an end with Venus In Furs, a surprising cover of The Velvet Underground that the band appropriates to perfection, not without retaining some psychedelic accents.
Once the surprise of its theatrical overtones has worn off, Folterkammer has no trouble captivating and abusing us at will. Weibermacht takes the codes of Black Metal, Symphonic Metal and BDSM and carefully knots them together.
85/100