review by Sean16 @ metalarchives (only fragments)
Never mind the money, or rather the lack of; never mind all the shit received – at times well-deserved, more often not – and partially thrown back. Unbreakable, whether you like it or not. Understand that, you puny mortal: for years now Crematory have been recording and releasing music for themselves, first, for the happy few who can properly understand them, next, while the large rest of this doomed world may as well fuck off. “This is not for the innocent / This is for you and for me”: it could hardly be more explicit. Not the ideal way of gathering new followers for sure… That’s just when they achieve their best ranking ever on the German charts, starting 17th. Crematory, or the eternal paradox.
That being said, is Inglorious Darkness a metal album? Same as with a good half of their whole 21st-Century output, it’s debatable. Still, indus, goth, krautrock, or pop music, it isn’t either. And if it isn’t, it’s because it’s all of those, metal included, together; not only the album, but the tracks taken individually as well. Hence, to be appreciated at its true value, it will require, from the listener, some kind of harmonic suspension of disbelief; the ability to forget for a while about what is objectively good or bad music, to forget about good or bad taste – this artwork, man, this artwork – to only focus on the essential question that is, do I like it? Oh yes I do.
Their heaviest work in years, in fact. For once, no ballad, no syrupy love song or piano track; very few acoustic guitar lines, the verses of Forsaken being an exception. Much less clean vocals than before, also, to mostly focus on Felix Stass and his roars – still a beast after all this time, a fact which is alas much more obvious live than in the studio, where his performance is regularly twisted by the various distortions and other effects which are the law of the genre. At least that one remains relatively sober with these. The rhythm section endlessly pounds loud and ugly – that’s ugly once again; ugly the loud bass, ugly the drums, save perhaps for a double bass trigger sounding a tad too thin. And if complaining about artifice may look futile when dealing with a sound which is, by essence, largely artificial, don’t forget we want our artifice to stay crushing and disturbing, not clicking. Oh well, that’s Markus Jüllich and once again, he doesn’t give a fuck of whatever you might think.
Anything else? Songs in German are back, and that’s for the better. We’re treading on familiar ground there. As we’re treading on equally familiar ground with the small Easter eggs which aren’t for the innocent, like the lyrics from the aptly named The Sound of my Life made from songtitles picked from their prior discography, ideally suited to an anniversary album. “But they did it before”, you shout, brandishing your long worn-out Awake CD. Of course they did. Constantly reinventing themselves, Crematory build on the firm ground of their own legacy to keep on going forward. In case that was not clear enough, they carry on with yet another version of their anthem Tears of Time / Tränen der Zeit, the fifth one to be precise, not counting the multiple live renditions. All of this going hand in hand with yet new sounds, new loops, new melodies.
So, stronger than ever, the ugly duckling of gothic metal? Let’s not go that far, and simply acknowledge that after 30 years of existence with their fair share of highs and lows it’s still fully able to rock, please, and surprise. That’s already a lot.
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