The Netherlands “A Challenge of Honour’ is really quite the band. Their music is a diverse mixture of bombastic orchestral pieces, neo folk, dark ambiance, marching music, militaristic percussion, with lots of samples of horns blaring, bombs bursting, radio telecasts, and various samples from the 1959 Frans Wisbar film ‘Nacht Fiel über Gotenhafen.’ In case you’re not familiar the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ was a Red Cross ship torpedoed and blown to nothingness in January 1945 by the Russians. Over 9,000 people died during this attack and I guess the idea behind this album is to document this event and pay tribute to those lost. A requiem of sorts, I suppose.
Now as I had earlier mentioned this album is a really diverse mix and you get quite a bit with this release. Songs like ‘1938’ or ‘Völkerwanderung’ are epic and quite menacing orchestral pieces that show up a lot on this album and are generally mixed with militaristic percussion or marching music. ‘Departure’ is also a really interesting orchestral piece that mixes in the sounds of a ship traveling in the water with sounds of a horn blaring and thunder rumbling in the distance. ‘Torpedoes’ is well to document the attack on the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff.’ Once more this is a very intense orchestral piece with tribal like drumming with various German spoken samples plus again more samples such as torpedoes striking the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff.’ As well a few of the songs are simply just samples taken from the movie mentioned above. Other songs like ‘Heiliges Feuer’ or ‘Weakness’ are rather straightforward ambient pieces, and then there’s one instrumental neo folk piece called ‘Only Stones Remain.’
Even though the album is diverse it really flows really well in documenting the lift off and downfall of the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff.’ Definitely an album I would recommend for fans of dark orchestral music and things related to World War II.
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