EP REVIEW: Triebe – Ellende

Austria’s ELLENDE, the autonomous project of Lukas Gosch (L.G.), was formed in 2011 but rose to prominence with 2016’s Todbringer and 2019’s Lebensnehmer. ELLENDE, meaning both ‘exiled’ and ‘miserable’, has become renowned for a thoughtful and emotive approach to black metal which forgoes sheer aggression in favour of bleak beauty. ELLENDE remains more orthodox than ‘post’ projects like ALCEST or DEAFHEAVEN, but is an excellent example of black metal’s contemporary sound and style. Triebe is the sixth release, and third EP, of the project.

Triebe, meaning ‘drive’ or ‘instinct’, is an “adaption, interpretation and mix” of material found on the 2014 Weltennacht EP. The relation between the tracks is often more conceptual than musical, and serves to show how far L.G. has brought the project in seven years. An EP is often where artists explore a different approach without committing to an album’s worth of material, and here L.G. draws more heavily on acoustic and instrumental passages than usual. ELLENDE remains a black metal project, to be sure, but Triebe encapsulates that sound within the cinematic qualities of post-rock. You’ll get that violent melancholy here, all speed and fury, but dispersed among slower and reflective instrumental movements – and, unlike with a lot of other black metal, this isn’t just a way of generating contrast on the cheap.

From a compositional perspective, L.G. has done a convincing job of combining these dynamics, and the result is some of the most accomplished song-writing we’ve heard from ELLENDE. That being said, there are definitely instances where Triebe becomes too meandering and minimal for its own good. The middle section of Weltennacht, for example, is sprawling but empty; the payoff is arguably worth the wait, but we found it too lengthy to sustain the momentum of the track. As an adaption of older material, a more concise approach throughout would have benefitted this EP,

This feels more like a self-contained release than an appendix-piece or curiosity for longstanding fans of the project, to its credit. While we found it to be rather sparse for a relatively short release, there is still much to appreciate here. Triebe’s achievement, above all, is to show how far ELLENDE has come from both a compositional and production perspective since this material was debuted in 2014. We admire the sombre and sincere atmosphere which multi-instrumentalist L.G. has recreated here, and look forward to hearing the next full-length from this exciting project.

Rating: 7/10

Triebe is out now via AOP Records.

Like ELLENDE on Facebook.