WALDTEUFEL

"Sanguis"

Beta-Iacatam Ring Records - 2007

CD / LP + 7" - 300 copies / LP art edition - 35 copies

Nearly ten years after his famous and celebrated debut "Heimliches Deutschland", Markus Wolff is back behind the mask of Waldteufel delivering the second full-length work. It's small Portland-based Beta-Iactam Ring Records to release this fascinating new album, in both luxurious CD and vinyl format: the digital disc comes inside a cardboard case perfumed with a wild aroma of moss, while the LP is a limited edition including a bonus 7".

The music of "Sanguis" has moved quite ahead that of its predecessor, venturing deeper into the dark forests where the Devil of the Woods dwell, trying to capture its most secret and frightening chants and rituals. Indeed, Waldteufel's music sounds in these new tracks even more primitive, ancestral and pagan, with its invocating German lyrics, tribal percussion and haunting battle horns. The new elements are represented by the raw and distorted electric guitar that appears in the powerful "Kupferwut" and "Sanguis", adding a sort of early black metal feeling to the formula, and by the sinister electronic will 'o' wisps whose presence is felt in several passages.

Markus Wolff's new effort is convincing and evoking, pleasantly distant from any neofolk cliché and more authentic in its search for the true German pagan soul. The use of electric guitars and electronics seems to suggest a connection with the most evolved wings of the black metal scene, whose interest in neofolk and industrial is very much alive since at least ten years. Recommended!

- Simon V.

Website: http://www.waldteufel.net

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