There’s nothing that I can enjoy more than sheer emotion transformed or materialized into art, and with The Black House, Krieg manage to do exactly that. The Black House is a concept album based on nightmarescapes and hallucinations suffered by nonetheless than Imperial, the mastermind behind Krieg, and in The Black House, each of those manifestations of Imperial’s dark subconscious are shaped and molded into 12 songs (including an awesome Velvet Underground cover) of the most grim and dark nature.

Krieg became famous in the “scene” because of it’s extreme noise Black Metal sound, but in The Black House we find Krieg tuning down a bit on the noise part, thus creating more concrete song structures with a less chaotic feel to their music; yet, it is important to mention that they still manage to create a very dense and brutal sound.

Ranging from mid tempo to full blast beat frenzy, Krieg’s driving force is mainly composed of thick tremolo riffing with a bit of a Death Metal approach here and there, dual guitar melodies, and some excellent hooks thrown in with such bravado you’ll fuckin’ tremble. The drums are simple but effective, sticking to the basics with excellent cymbal work and adding a lot of power to the songs. Imperial’s vocals are fuckin’ amazing, ranging from effective growls to tormented screams and even some great deep and low clean singing used in the background here and there. All of this with a production that sacrifices a tad of Krieg’s brutality, but that in exchange makes the album more coherent.

In the same way a room can be regarded as an individual entity or as part of a house, the songs in the album are able to create unique soundscapes that can stand as something of their own, but that at the same time are undeniably part of a whole, complementing each other and playing a part of the solid entity, of the house.

Once again Krieg show the amazing potential of Black Metal by creating crushing anthems that remind us of our most tormented thoughts and that bring us straight back to the darkest moments of our life, and that’s what Black Metal is about: transcendence, about transporting us to certain key feelings, emotions, thoughts and mental states that we couldn’t otherwise succeed on achieving.

The Black House is a brutal rendition fueled by hatred, darkness and desperation. It will fulfill every single of your Black Metal desires and will keep you coming back for more and more. Krieg have succeeded on creating one of the finest examples of sheer emotion through music. Embrace the darkness, embrace Krieg’s The Black House.