ALLERSEELEN

"Hallstatt"

Aorta / Ahnstern - 2007

CD

Allerseelen returns with his brand-new studio album, four years after the much-acclaimed "Flamme" and the luxurious limited-edition early discography vinyl reissues. "Hallstatt" takes its title from the name of a beautiful and mysterious upper Austrian village, where a very famous ossuary with hundreds of painted skulls is located. The local tradition of painting the skulls and bones of the dead in colourful and joyful way seems to have fascinated Gerhard since his childhood, spent in another village nearby. But, Hallstatt is also famous for ancient Celtic tombs where many tools, weapons and manufactures were found. The album's main theme could be regarded as a return to one's roots, which for Allerseelen is to be found also in the music.

These new thirteen "apocalyptic industrial folklore songs", in fact, hold off the sparking and hot-blooded Mediterranean-influenced sound of "Flamme", "Venezia" and "Abenteurliches Herz", returning to a colder, more disturbing and primitive industrial mood. Pulsating electronic rhythms, noisy electric guitar distortions, heavy percussions and haunting, ritual melodies evoke nocturnal, solitary and eerie sceneries, lost somewhere in the Austrian Alps, between ancient lakes and magnificent peaks covered in snow. The atmosphere is closer to "Cruor", "Gotos=Kalanda" (from which a few sounds and samples have been re-utilized) and "Stirb und Werde", and surely "Hallstatt" is Allerseelen's darkest album since then.

As usual, Gerhard takes the chance to quote his favourite authors, using some of their texts as song lyrics. Friedrich Nietzche and Herman Hesse are homaged not by chance with the first two songs: the cybernetic ritual of "Nicht nur eine Sonne" and the powerful, hypnotic noise ride of "Der Sehnsucht Adlertrotz", surely among the CD's best moments. The subtler, more atmospheric and unsettling aspect of Allerseelen's music is explored in "Wir träumten voneinander" (which uses a text by German dramaturg Friedrich Hebbel) and "Hörst du die Toten singen" (with words of Austrian writer and book illustrator Alfred Kubin). Outstanding are also the dark and apocalyptic noise-ballads "Dunkelheit" and "Der Himmel ist eingestürtzt", as well as the odd dark synthpop of "Auf alten seltnen Wegen".

However, the most effective compositions of "Hallstatt" are probably the fantastic Renaissance dance "Mit der Sonne", musication of a poem by German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin, the crazy cacophonic ritual "Ohne das di wer siagt", which uses another text by Hesse adapted by Gerhard in the upper Austrian dialect. Last but not least, the gloomy "But a Spark in the Night", featuring voice and lyrics by Changes' Robert N. Taylor, and, easily milestone of the whole album, the incredible and exciting electric ballad "Kastanienlied", with words by no one less than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself.

"Hallstatt" marks a striking return for Allerseelen, back on paths explored in his early days, but grasping their real essence only after nearly twenty years of experience and existence. The new CD is so rich and articulated, that probably any follower of Gerhard's music will found something for his/her taste: noisy ballads, melodic yet disturbing atmosphere pieces, hypnotic rituals, sacral and primitive hymns. The feeling is that Allerseelen still has a lot to say and will keep surprising us release after release, like he has done until now.

- Simon V.

Website: http://www.geocities.com/ahnstern

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/allerseelen

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