October 2025 Feature Release - The North Edition

New month, new feature release, which sees me selecting Paysage d'Hiver's 2021 album "Geister", the follow-up to his magnum opus "Im Wald".

Please feel free to leave any comments on the album below or even write a review.

https://metal.academy/releases/26964

I quite like "Geister" but think it's been disadvantaged by being positioned between two records that I regard as being genuine classics in "Im Wald" & "Die Berge". I really should return to it to give it a proper rating at some point.

I started off with the intention of owning all Paysage d' Hiver releases on vinyl.  I got to Schattengang then got completely sidetracked.  I did not enjoy Im Wald at all, just could not get my head around it's appeal and just switched it off each time I tried and so I never got onto Die Berge.  Now I look I missed his other 2020 release also Im Traum.  I may try and get back on track with Geister.  Got a night in a hotel tomorrow with work and need a good excuse to not linger at dinner with my colleagues.  Headphones packed.

Been listening to this again this morning whilst plodding through the soggy local woodlands with Koko and it still holds up pretty well, although I am going to trim back my original 4.5 star rating to a little less exhuberant 4.0. I don't think this is because of any real shift in my appreciation of the album, but more part of a recalibration of my perceptions over recent months.

Anyway, here is my original review written at the time of the album's release which I still generally agree with:

For anyone who is interested, Paysage d'Hiver's second official album continues the story of The Wanderer, who this time around meets beings from another dimension who he sees as ghosts. The kicker is that the extra-dimensional beings are us in our world and we are only able to contact The Wanderer through the Rites of Winter such as those practiced by a traditional mask cult from the Lötschental valley in Switzerland which, presumably, Wintherr is familiar with. One such mask is depicted on the album's cover and is indeed a fearsome-looking item. (I swear you learn all kinds of weird shit when you listen to black metal!)

This time around Wintherr has trimmed the length of the tracks, the longest, excepting the ambient closer, is under seven minutes, which is unheard of with this project. The style is much nearer to conventional black metal than the icily frigid soundscapes Wintherr usually conjures up. I would even go as far to suggest that at times it doesn't sound hugely dissimilar to early Darkthrone. I have a feeling this may upset some of the newly acquired fans that Im Wald garnered the project, but somehow I get the feeling that will bother Wintherr not one jot.

Despite the abbreviated track lengths this is still quite a formidable album, it's eleven tracks clock in at 70 minutes - a snip compared to Im Wald's two hours I'll grant but still a daunting duration for some not used to lengthy black metal excursions. Again, despite the shorter tracks, the album doesn't offer a massive amount of variety and heavily relies on repetition for it's effect so, once more, if you're not familiar with the style it may underwhelm and disappoint. For those of us more used to this style of black metal though, there is plenty to get your teeth into. The vocals are Wintherr's usual washed out shrieks that tear through the ether like a banshee wail and would freeze the blood were you to hear them during a nighttime forest hike! As mentioned previously the tracks really only serve as parts of a whole and it is the cumulative effect of the tracks' repetition and their more visceral savagery that is the album's real aim I would venture.

Overall, Geister is a brave move by Wintherr, released on the back of such a critically acclaimed album as Im Wald and yet deliberately moving away from what made that album so successful. While I must admit it doesn't scream "Masterpiece" in the same way as Im Wald, this is still a great black metal album and the day that a black metal artist like Wintherr starts doing what he feels is expected of hm then that is the day that black metal is truly lost. Luckily that day still seems a long way off.

4/5

I have been spinning this a few times this week and I am yet to make it through a full sitting in one go as I keep putting it on when I climb into bed and then fall asleep (more of a reflection on how quickly I drift off when I hit the hay as opposed to any scourge on the entertainment value of the record).  What I do like about it is how it captures the violence of black metal and yet still is able to shroud it in that atmospheric hue that we have all come to know and expect of Wintherr (which differs from how Sonny hears it - which is what makes the reviews here so interesting for me, how different people perceive records and hear different things is fascinating to me).