EP REVIEW: Jenseits – Finsterforst

Germany’s FINSTERFORST are far from strangers to longer form tracks. Over the course of their first five albums, and even as far back as their debut Weltenkraft, the band have often experimented with songs that exceed the ten-minute mark, with their blend of folk, black and viking metal being an excellent canvas on which to craft far more expansive and adventurous tunes. But they’ve never created one huge, record-spanning composition that they seem more than capable of. That is, until now. Their latest EP Jenseits, although technically broken into four separate parts, is essentially one large song in its own right, providing what is easily one of the band’s most ambitious, and indeed most creative, outings in recent memory.

Kapitel I: Freiheit starts things off in an epic and grandiose fashion, with a sonorous choir creating an ethereal, bombastic sound straight away. When the rest of the music suddenly bursts into life, it’s likewise a huge sounding song with thick guitars, dense, groove-laden riffs, angelic keyboards and booming, percussive drums. It steadily gets darker and harder, with the introduction of snarled, rasping vocals and a chunkier guitar sound pushing the music into a somewhat black metal sound, although the magnificent, viking metal undercurrent still remains very much at the heart of this song. Subtle accordion touches add a palpable folky element into this already eclectic mix, adding yet another layer to this incredibly ambitious and cavernous opening salvo.

Kapitel II: Dualität, the second part of this sprawling effort, adopts a more spacey, keyboard-centric sound, with the dense, droning guitars and thunderous drums anchoring the music firmly within metal. The omnipresent choirs that make up the backing vocals similarly carve through the opaque keys, adding a rumbling baritone that underpins some of this track’s most awe-inspiring moments. As the song reaches its halfway mark, everything seemingly comes to an abrupt halt, recalibrating towards an impenetrable blackened metal juggernaut, with the keyboards being replaced by a more traditional, rhythmic combo of drums, bass and guitars, with the searing vocals and orchestral flourishes taking a backseat to allow a polished guitar solo to take centre stage.

Kapitel III: Reflexionen, the third act of this EP, is decidedly it’s most minimalistic addition, with a more ambient style of keyboard playing creating a base upon which acoustic guitars, accordion, flutes and sombre, clean vocal accompaniments transform this into a far more folk-orientated portion of the song. It serves both as an interlude from the chaos that surrounds it whilst being a distinct and memorable part of the track at large as a result, altering the dynamic of this record briefly before the final, monolithic movement begins.

Kapitel IV: Katharsis shifts back towards the sort of style that dominated the EP’s opening minutes, with weighty guitars and bass, choirs and acidic vocals, but manages to blend the expansive keyboards that were a key feature in Dualität, as well as the sort of imaginative folk that was present on the preceding section of the album. Musically, its core is far closer to atmospheric black metal, but with far more nuances and imagination than bands of that stripe are often able to muster, layering in a variety of different components to keep this climactic, lengthy section of the record as engrossing and powerful as possible.

Taking one incredibly lengthy track, even one that is loosely broken up into four separate tracks as this is, and keeping the whole thing engaging and immersive for a listener is a gargantuan, near insurmountable task, but FINSTERFORST have managed to achieve this with ease. Between the musicians involved and the wider range of instruments at their disposal, there’s a lot of extremely imaginative elements peppered throughout this record to help keep things interesting, but none of these various pieces ever feel like they have been inserted into the mix to add a bit of variety just for the sake of it – something that has got to be quite hard to accomplish when you have nearly 40 minutes worth of music to take into consideration. For a band that are renowned for creating such sprawling and epic offerings, this might just be one of their crowning achievements, a seamless and grandiose monolith that’s extremely hard not to admire in its scale and scope.

Rating: 9/10

Jenseits is out now via AOP Records.

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