Vinterriket - Der letzte Winter - Der Ewigkeit entgegen (2005)

Vinterriket (Norwegian & Swedish for, 'The Winter Realm') is the first and longest running project of German musician, Christoph Ziegler who since 2000 has been releasing music related to the dark side of nature. During these past years he's released a staggering amount of music, although in many cases releases are very limited and then re-released under new names or together as compilations. He also seems to create a great deal of merchandise with everything ranging from shirts, hoodies, posters, photo books, DVDs and deluxe box sets.

'Der letzte Winter - Der Ewigkeit entgegen' seems to hold a special place in my heart as I remember the winter of 2005/06 not being a very pleasing one for me and I seem to remember frequent trips driving through snowy landscapes and thinking about life on many occasions with this album as my musical accompaniment. Also in particular the song, 'Winternacht - Kalte Schwärze im Bann der silbernen Sonne' is significant for me since this song had appeared on the Lunar Hypnosis mp3 compilation, 'Dreams of Winter Under the Scorched Summer Sun,' which had come out in August of '05, actually before this album did, thus making it exclusive for a short while.

All that aside, this record is in Vinterriket's highly atmospheric black metal style with only three short ambient tracks. This style relies heavily on backing synth passages mixed with buzzing raw distorted electric guitars, programmed drums and throat shredding vocals in German. The black metal tracks are generally very long (the shortest being seven minutes) and they all open with very dark moody intros that then rip into the scything blackened terror that is Vinterriket. Each of them have the dark synths running throughout the entire song and almost all of the songs also have breaks in them for just purely ambient moments and nature sounds as well, which really increases the winter mood.

The guitars don't offer up much in terms of melody as they mostly just sound like a raging winter storm and I think perhaps that's a bit of a shame as some distinguishable riffs would have been immense. The same could be said for the programmed drums too, since you can easily tell they are not performed by a human, which is hit or miss with most folks, but for all I know newer Vinterriket records in this style may have just what I always wanted.

I've always found CZ's metal records to work as one cohesive long song where individual songs really don't stick out as much, yet the whole experience is quite good. As I mentioned above I used this record a lot during the winter time after its release and truly try placing this album in your car's stereo while driving around at night during snowfall or while walking through a snowy field or forest and you'll find yourself being transported to this hypnotic winter realm Christoph is seeking through his creations.

'Der letzte Winter - Der Ewigkeit entgegen' and Vinterriket creations in general are not for everyone, but for those that are looking for absolutely cold atmospheric black metal with original and beautiful sounding synths should definitely give this one a chance.