Review by Ben for Lunar Aurora - Andacht (2007)

This is a wonderful album that more black metal fans should experience. I first heard back when it was released and it's one of those albums that I find myself going back to over and over for another fix. I know it seems redundant to use the word atmospheric when describing a release in a subgenre that contains the word itself, but these Germans completely filled all 54 minutes of Andacht with it. The black metal itself has a heap of emotion enducing riffs and (surprisingly audible) basslines, but the addition of moving synths, gregorian chants and snippets from various sources (I recognise Bram Stoker's Dracula for one) take it to a whole other level. These aspects also help to give each of the six tracks their own identity and, unlike many atmospheric black metal albums, I'm never in doubt as to which track I'm listening to. I've always assumed that this is an album deserving of five stars, but now that I've given it a few concentrated listens in the past week, I've come to realise that it does lose steam towards the end. The final two tracks are not quite as great as the first four, and it's this drop that has resulted in me settling on a high 4.5. Andacht is still an album I highly recommend to anyone that enjoys black metal.

As a final note, I discovered today that the band utilised a drum machine for this recording. I'm sure Daniel will tell me it's obvious, but I must admit it's never even crossed my mind throughout all the listens over the years. I'm not one of those elitists that think drums have to be real for the music to be authentic, so it makes no difference to me. Either way, they're clearly done extremely well here.