Wijsgeer & Narreman
It’s a really cheap trick to advert a band with elements/tags that are quite popular at the moment, but many labels choose to do so. In many cases it doesn’t even matter if you could justify the comparission at all. A whole bunch of bands suddenly were “post”-rocking after it got modern, Laster is said to have similiarities with Urfaust, but - to be honest- there aren’t any. Read on why you should try them out either way.
The similiarities between Laster and Urfaust aren’t really numerous – as there are only two: Their origin and the number of members per band, as they nearly have nothing in common in terms of music. The demo Wijsgeer & Narreman is the first demo of Laster, maybe they plan to change their style in the future but that would be quite dumb, but it’s really odd to advert with Urfaust if they have nothing in common, too. The quintessence of the above shall be: If you were on the search for some clone of Urfaust you probably won’t like Laster, so stop reading. If you like DSBM: Please read on.
The kind of DSBM Laster is offering has not really much in common with the modern records that were popular before the great post-something hype. The vocals aren’t about how hard life in a town is, they don’t feature complains about the bitchy ex-girlfriend and all in all nothing to whine about – they are inspired by the good old Faust of J.W. Goethe. The record is truly an hommage to the nineties, especially the production is quite “retro” with its creaking and raw sound (but still clear enough to please your ears though). The vocals feature a quite early nineties style as well and they remind me of some early Burzum records at times. Sadly, all of the elements Laster used to write their songs aren’t new at all, which raises the question why anyone should listen to them instead of those old original nineties bands?
That’s a quite easy question to answer: The execution. The oldschool touch of the demo is really brilliant, especially with todays focus on really soft post-rock influences, and it’s really well done as well. The songs on Wijsgeer & Narreman are mostly held in mid-tempo regions and only sparsely played any faster than that which results in a really hypnotic mass of atmospheric black metal. The thick layer of guitars is adding the extra bit feeling that the music needs, not least because they are sparsely using any new riffs per track passage, but still manage to be interesting enough to keep listening. The sad side is, that the demo gets quite boring after several play throughs because of the similiarities between the tracks and the quite similiar song structures, but what did one expect of a round about 20 minutes playing time demo tape?
Conclusion:
It’s a really brave thing to publish a oldschool DSBM demo tape in these times, as many of the “new age” black metal fans won’t get how great this piece of music can be compared to all the post-something stuff that floods the market, but that may favour the bold. Many people start to hate the flood of post-rock/metal records and they may turn to something more oldschool like this demo. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, as Laster feature everything you would want to hear from a nineties band in a well done way. I would recommend to listen to it at least one time, as you can get it for free on the bands bandcamp site.
Rating: 70/100
Date of release: June, 1st 2012
Laster – Bandcamp (Download included)
Tracklist:
| 1. | In levenskolken, in dadenstorm | 05:46 | |
| 2. | Tot eenheid verweven | 05:39 | |
| 3. | Wijsgeer ende narreman | 07:36 | |
| Total Playing Time: | 19:01 | ||
Recently discovered this one and really, really loving it. A good review for a good love-it-or-hate-it-demo.