Skip to content

Cold Spring

HERR * The Winter Of Constantinople (cd 2005 cold spring)

“Heilig Europa / Romeins Rijk” (“Sacred Europe / Roman Empire”) is the new Dutch star in the scene, however there is one Brit in the four-piece-band. HERR did a few smaller releases of which some are reviewed within these pages and now Cold Spring picked up the talented band with this rerelease of a vinyl release and the anouncement of another full-lenght. The band has an original and nice sound, orchestral, sometimes tranquilly bombastic, here and there a militant touch, but mostly striking are the wonderfull vocals, usually spoken in beautiful Britisch. MP3s can be found on a few places on the internet (try Equilibriummusic for example) so you can have a taste. A minor point about “The Winter Of Constantinople” is that when you also have the four-band split cd “Hopes Die In Winter”, you get the same tracks again. Oh well, they surely are very nice and I am glad that there is another good new band from my country.

Goatvargr * s/t (cd 2006 cold spring)

Goatvargr is Goat (USA) and MZ.412, etc. (Swe), so you may know what to expect. This untitled album contains about 45 minutes of very heavy industrial noise. Some (parts of) tracks (such as the beginning of the cd) are nice and dark, other tracks are too chaotic noise for my taste, but the heavy industrial beats make Goatvargr better to endure. For the lovers of extreme electronics.

Folkstorm * Sweden (cd 2004 cold spring)

Cold Spring found 2001 material of this Swedish noise-combo that they forgot to release and the band decided to remix and remaster this material and make it into a goodbye cd, the last Folkstorm release. Funny, when I got the cd and saw the cover there is a picture looking awfully much like that on a t-shirt that I recently bought, but then the print is a mix between our Dutch royal ‘logo’ and the logo of the shop. Anyway, “Sweden” contains 50 minutes of extreme noise. Some tracks are fairly enjoyable with dark drones, some kind of rhythm or highly distorted melodies, while others are nothing but earcracking noise. I prefer the more structured kind of noise and this cd is a bit too much in the other direction. When I only pick the good tracks, this cd is still relatively enjoyable, but the other half is not really my cup of tea. Those who DO like the more extreme kind of sound will already be familiar with this Swedish band, have their other material and buy this last cd as well.

Deadwood * 8 19 (cd 2005 cold spring)

Cold Spring noise. When I put on “8 19” (unfortunately I haven’t been able to find out what the title refers to, 19 august of some year?) and heard the uncompromising and unstructured extreme noise opening track, I feared that this would be a cd with a kind of noise that I can’t stand. But after 11 minutes we go to track two and things get a lot better, very dark ambient, a little monotous, but nice. Almost 15 minutes later we go on to a better kind of noise, low frequencies, an industrial background, but still pretty damn loud. This goes on for 11 minutes after which a track opens with dark ambient, but going over in very dark noise, a really great track. The last two tracks are shorter, 10 minutes and 4 minutes. The fifth track has some kind of rhythm, but very slow and the last track is more like a dark industrial ambient piece. Accept for the first one, I really like “8 19”. All track have the highly distorted vocals, but that is okay when the music is distorted too. It seems that nowadays noise tends to have the nice, dark sound that I enjoy and not as much making ‘noise for the sake of noise’. Deadwood is also a good example of a noise act that doesn’t stick to one kind of noise, bringing variety and innovation to the genre. That is nice, because I find myself enjoying noise more often than a couple of years ago!

Bleiburg * Pieces Of A Broken Dream (2cd 2006 cold spring)

I knew this band only by name and from a few mp3 snippets that I heard. I think that they are part of the ‘new generation’ artists in the scene, but apparently they have been around long enough to have a double cd compilation with almost only tracks for which they coorperated with other bands from the scene. Bleiburg itself makes neofolk and industrial (ambient) and so do the bands on this cd, from The Soil Bleeds Black to Thorn-Agram and from Harvest Rain to Vidna Obmana. The first cd is relatively tranquil with ambient and folky pieces, the second cd is a bit harder with more industrial and noisy tracks, but still ambient. Most tracks are actually pretty good and especially with of the variety of cooperators and styles, the cds are still structered well enough to form some kind of unity. A nice release of a band that I didn’t know well enough.

Archon Satani * Mind Of Flesh & Bones (cd 2006 cold spring)

Cold Spring released the famous 1993 Staalplaat cd of the extinct Swedish duo Archon Satani (after the split we got Inanna and Ordo (Rosarius) Equilibrio). Industrial ambient with a few noisy touches and unfortunately on this album no vocals. I think most of the Archon Satani material has been rereleased now. Would this make them less of a cult act? Anyway, if you like the old CMI-sound or industrial dark ambient in general, you will have to get some of that Archon Satani material like this one.

Von Thronstahl * E Pluribus Unum (cd 2001 cold spring)

This is the second cd of Von Thronstahl. “E Pluribus Unum” contains contributions to compilation cds and other rare material, which I actually find a bit cheap for a second cd. On the other hand, it makes up for 64 minutes and there is also material that I didn’t have, so… What you will find are the contributions to Riefenstahl, Cavalcare La Tigra, Thorak, Audacia Imperat, Za Dom Spremni, the upcoming Iron Guard / Cordreanu compilation, Judas Kiss magazine compilation and some compilation of the Russian RWCDistribution. Further live in Leipzig, the 10″ and some re-works. All in all mostly unknown to me or different from what I already had. Of course most material is quite old, some tracks even sound more like Forthcoming Fire than Von Thronstahl. Also there is no coherence between the songs, but still this is a very nice cd. I am very curious about new material.

———————————————-

The second cd of Von Thronstahl (which I first reviewed on 29/9/01) contains hard-to-get material. Compilation contributions, the 10″, etc. The material is a bit older and not all is as good as on the first cd. Still this is a very good album that has now been made available again in a digipack. Beside the packing and the order of the pages in the booklet (nothing left out this time), this new edition is completely the same. Dark industrial, ‘neofolk’, orchestal tunes, martial tracks and at the end a long compilation of ‘traditional music’. Again available for those who missed it.