In an extremely luxery box comes this compilation of the German Loki label. A label that with the growing acceptance of more extreme ideas in the gothic scene gets more distribution and knowledge.
As expected from this label, the compilation has a theme. It is dedicated to the Grandloge “Fraternitas Saturni” in Berlin, which is an irregular, magical masonic lodge. At first sight there also seems to be a link to Satanism here (a Saturn/Satan connection?) because of the cover which is a painting of a face of that looks a lot like that of A.S. LaVey. The face just represents a demon though.
But, let us move to the music. The bands featured here are Inade, Herbt9, Blood Axis, First Law, SRP, Predominance, Endura and Turbund Sturmwerk. Definitely not the least bands and all in close relation to the Loki-circle. All tracks are pretty minimal dark ambient tracks, so you should not expect any bombasm, not even from Blood Axis or Turbund Sturmwerk. None of the tracks belong to the best that I have heard of the various projects, which is a bit of a pitty. Blood Axis brings a piece of spoken word. A poem accompanied by violin-playing and some synthetic sounds. Turbund’s track is pretty typical, but fits the musical concept of this compilation very well. The Endura track sounds similar to what they do on “The Watcher”. When you know Inade you will have a good idea of what to expect here. Predominance are not as industrial as usual and then we have to bands that I never heard music of. Herbst9 just released a cd on Loki, but their track is not too good. SRP contributed with a great track, but I don’t know anything about them further.
This box is pretty expensive and I recommand it only to people who really admire the bands on this compilation.
However I don’t really like the cover painting, the rest of the artwork is really beautiful.
Please check out the rest of these pages for reviews of releases of some of the featured projects. <13/6/00><3>