Dawnfall ‘Drei Raume’ (2002)

It starts off like the basement recording of an awkward, aspiring jam-metal trio: The guitar loops through an odd scale run over and over, like some fingering practice pattern from yesterday’s lesson. The sonic ambience is part Hellhammer, part early Bathory – with the looming threat of free jazz explosion at any second.

If you make it through the first “movement” (no song titles here, just pretentious Roman numerals) – you’ll begin to wonder if they are the silliest avant-garde black metal act you’ve ever heard…or just maybe, they are the most brilliant.

Oddly-parsed haunted keyboard sounds join in, as if excess noodling was spliced out of the final tapes, and then comes a wash of Chipmunk voices in seance and witchery. Electronic blips and new-age passages turn into evil new wave, with weird drum machine workouts and plenty of deathmetal screams and howls.

I don’t know else what to say about Dawnfall: I’d been looking for it for some time. You have to search a bit – but eBay sellers will have it & there’s a few ‘dark metal’ mailorder places that still have it in stock. Thanks to Mr Butcher for this link; try it & see if you like it.

Dawnfall ‘Drei Raume’