Black Autumn hail from North-Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and were formed by M. Krall in 1995. The first years the project did not release anything official, yet as from this century, Black Autumn turned out to be a rather productive entity. There were a couple of demos in between 2003 and 2006, as well as a split (with Italy’s Abyss), and in 2007 this solo-outfit released the debut full length, Ecstasy, Nightmare, Doom (ISO666). Three more full lengths followed, i.e. Rivers Of Dead Leaves (Antichristian Front, 2008), Aurora - Morgen Rothe Im Auffgang (Cain, 2010), and Ghost At Our Windows (Depressive Illusions, 2011), followed by a split-CD with Zebulon Kosted (Al Hadid, 2012). Last year there was the Advent Of October-EP (via Bylec Tum), and very recently Rain Without End Records, a sub-division of Naturmacht Productions, released the fifth full length, Losing The Sun. The review on that one will be posted in a couple of days.
This review deals with the re-release of one of the demos, Isolation. It was the first demo by Black Autumn, originally independently released in 2003 with Black Autumn as working title. Kassetten Edition Dreizack re-issued the demo in cassette-format in 2006 with the new title, Isolation, and Kunsthauch do the same via their 99 Screams Series. Their format is digipack-CD, with inclusion of a bonus track, Psychic.
A Song For The Unsheltered, the opening track, opens with a sober / sombre Classical piano melody and operatic soprano vocals, which slowly transforms into an Ambient / Neo-Classical piece of floating atmospheres. Despite a certain repetition, there is quite some variation, maintaining a characteristic post-emotional dream-world. Towards the end, also electric guitars and heavier drums join the feast, accompanying the mystic happening to a climax. Borderline is quite different compared to the opening track. The first half is based on cosmic-electronic and industrial-guitar based noise, with pretty specific but extremely oppressing vocals, and a second half that partly combines elements from Sludge, Drone, Groove and Industrial, and partly the eerie grimness from the first half again. A Night In Hell, the again, the third track on this release, starts with a grandiose one-minute intro, merely based on a piano melody, and then transfers in an industrialised form of obscure, unusual Extreme Rock Metal Noise. …thing… Once again, like in the former tracks, the initial theme comes back, penetrating itself in the body of this sonic construction. And damn, but this track’s finale even experiments with the guitar-focused fun-of-play of the purest Heavy Metal tradition. Summers End, the last track from the original demo, is a very eerie piece. It starts with an abyssal and asphyxiation synth-scape, joined with cosmic and industrial elements, and scarily evolving towards frenzy; first the spacy way, then the massively droning, dark-industrialised, psycho-grinding way. This edition comes with a bonus track, aptly named Psychic. It starts like some cold-meat-industrial piece of compositional deconstruction, and after a while (1:41) it transforms into weirder, spacier, more psychotropic dimensions. Then it changes to a repetitive, Minimal Industrial piece of sonic pleasure, slowly morphing into a soundwave from far beyond, floating into nothingness…
Worth giving it a try, but at least definable as ‘unusual’…