Nargaroth - Jahreszeiten (2009)

This is Nargaroth's 6th full-length, following Semper Fidelis which was released in 2007. My former experiences with this band only includes Black Metal Ist Krieg, which I thought was a quite decent album, but not much more than so. This album is based on the seasons of the year and the songs reflects the seasons mood. Logically they are named (translated from german) Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The first track is just a three-minute german spoken-word intro and then it kicks off with Spring (Frühling) which is a real surprise for people who are used to Nargaroth's angry, grim style since this is a song that actually is very happy and in some places it sounds almost like a football chant.
The next song, Summer (Sommer) starts with a melody that sounds quite classically-inspired and then goes into sounding more like traditional black metal, although this song isn't happy as the former, it's not really all that evil either, it nearly has a nostalgic feel in some ways.
Autumn (Herbst) goes in a more melancholic style and features some acoustic guitar which fits the mood of the season. The last season and the last song, Winter, returns to the more traditional Nargaroth-sound and starts with a more evil-sounding riff and a blastbeat in the background.

This is a experiment that could go very well if it was done in the right way but unfortunately it didn't. The biggest problem with this album is that it's insanely boring! You can't listen to a song more than five minutes without getting bored and that's a really big problem since all the songs are over ten minutes, with Autumn (Herbst) clocking in at 21:58. Like many other black metal-releases it's also very repetitive, which is a really bad combination. The repetitiveness is probably Burzum's fault since many have copied Vargs' formula over the years, though Burzum was the only band that ever did it good. This just sounds forced. Yes, the album has some really good melodies here and there but it just doesn't click with me. Also the vocals are extremely annoying and Kanwulf seems to stay on the same note the whole time.

40/100