Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We seem to want to play a cosmic game of Truth or Dare with Karma and Fate, with Time. There seems to be a consensus amongst certain groups of people to see how far we can push the Earth past the tipping point, and what does that matter as long as those particular individuals have their own trough lined with gold and the fires always burning.
The art of anger is a lost cause, we used to be able to exploit it effectively without descending to the point of resorting to anarchy, such is the nature of the ecological and social breakdown facing us, the epidemic of human made disaster is enough to see that we need to place two fingers up on high and give a blow for blow, the tit for tat and give that wonderful word of Anglo Saxon the airing it deserves.
Anger only gets you so far, to some though it is as effective in today’s world as slight irritation, we need to see beyond that but temper it with the greatest weapons available, reason and love, for nothing upsets and provokes those who see the world and the people as a commodity more than understanding delivered with an iron fist inside the carefully stitched velvet glove.
Frank Herzig (Vocals), Jan Suk (Guitar), Luke Shook (Bass), Nils Kinzig (Drums) from the German band Schattenmann have looked upon the situation and tapped into the same rage and poetic identity of the enraged and delivers a reminder in the scale that fellow countrymen Rammstein have portrayed with timeless ease of all that we have become. Like Rammstein the sense of theatre is not far away from the music’s edge, the operatic touch which comes through in the sense of drama is to be applauded, and the gothic Metal power that smashes apart the limp and ineffective is one to be fully endorsed.
Across tracks such as the opener Schattenland, F.U.C.K.Y.O.U, the album title track of Epidemie, Warheit oder Pflicht, Darkroom and Schwarz = Religion, that sense of dealing with the emotions as they boil rapidly, the sense of guilt that we have not done more and the rising tension as we convince others to see against their conditioning is more than palpable, it is enough to burn, to ignite the rage but it does it with subtly, with precision, the target of this mass inoculation against the epidemic is not those who seek solace with each other, but the ones who seek to destroy what is good and decent about the human race.
A hard hitting but vital set of songs, ones that provoke a certain kind of sentiment, and is soothing to hear.
Schattenmann’s Epidemie is out now and available via AFM Records.
Ian D. Hall