EP REVIEW: The Stars Are Dead Now – ColdWorld
Misanthropic one-man black metal project COLDWORLD introduced its uniquely dark brand of brutality with TheStarsAreDeadNow in 2005. Independently released initially, the five-track EP has grown in reputation over the last 16 years, prompting multiple reissues, and two additional tracks. Now, this landmark release has been completely remastered and re-released through Eisenwald. There’s rarely been a more prevalent time for depressive black metal. Covid-19 has ensured that one way or another, we all experience the sort of isolation hardwired into the genre. Georg Börner, the multi-instrumentalist behind COLDWORLD, even released a series of singles throughout 2020, focused on the loneliness and despair that the pandemic has brought about.
The Stars Are Dead Now, the re-release added the spaces, is an interesting beast. This Empty Life eschews pummelling drums and raw guitar lines, focusing instead on orchestral arrangements and cold synth. Börner layers this with a hopeless, distressed vocal line and breaks up the aggression with sparse interludes. Being a debut release, tracks feel disjointed. Börner was nailing down his sound, so when the groovy, stripped-back riff opens Hate, it’s difficult to align the two tracks. Even as Hate develops with a backdrop of electronics and the guitars start to drop away, it is never quite cohesive enough. An excellent track, sure, but out of place.
Cancer changes the tone and style again, readopting the mid-paced dirge of the opening track, with a more prominent rhythm section working in the background. It is deliberately paced and, similarly to This Empty Life, falls away to near-silence towards the end. Suicide subverts your expectations with a laid-back, almost hip-hop beat that twists into a black metal riff. It’s a testament to Börner’s talent as he experiments with the form of black metal and tries to adopt other genre styles throughout. You can see the beginning of an artist capable of delivering undisputed classics like Melancholie² and Autumn. The near eight-minute electronica track The Old Ghost In The Well closed out the original release and is an unsettling listen, with the sound of air bubbles, metallic crashes and a subtle horror soundtrack. It leaves the listener feeling uncomfortable – like a too-clear window into the artist’s vision.
That Dead Stars and Ragnarök were tacked on to this, two accomplished but generic black metal tracks, is a shame. They pull you back out of the atmosphere that the original five tracks were successful in building. It relegates The Stars Are Dead Now to a curio; an indication of what COLDWORLD would become but nowhere near as satisfying as later releases.
The Stars Are Dead Now is out now via Eisenwald.
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