Isenburg, a solo project of Andras vocalist and Persecution bassist/vocalist Steffen Thümmel, is an interesting mixture of different ores. 'Erzgebirge' is a tribute to the man's homeland and its landscape of mountains and forests, located in eastern parts of Germany. Erzgebirge translates to "ore mountain" in English.

Music is a mixture of many things. Black metal plays a big part of Isenburg's sound in vein of guitar playing technique and thunderous, blasting drums. Dark heavy metal ('The Return' is actually very doomy and reminding me of Hypocrisy's song 'The Abyss') and pagan metal are important pieces, too, sometimes sounding familiar especially to pagan metal genre, but sometimes it's rather unique. Magnificent, heroic riffery between blasts are more for my liking. Synths are used well, and that's good since they often play as important elements in the songs. A drum machine is utilized, but it is on the better side of average; loud, but still without any human feel. Vocals are quite brutal, mainly being meaty growling with some low clean vocals.

Compositions are anything but typical. For example the opener 'Isenburg' offer fine "pagan" riffing, suddenly presenting a weird break with a bass solo and a doom part and black attack. The changes from part to part aren't seamless, but make this sound unique. While the changes aren't seamless, I do not get bored during these 40 minutes, because it's quite varying musically. 'Pandemoniac's beginning's bass playing brought the name Steve Harris to my mind. By the way, the title track includes parts of old Erzgebirge area music (not metal, hehe). It is meaningless to begin dissecting all the songs, because I want to leave some surprises for those who buy this album.

'Erzgebirge' has character, which is too rare nowadays. A nice debut album and hopefully not the only one Isenburg is going to release. If these characteristics can be maintained, there's definitely more tricks on offer.

Rating: 7 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
08/16/2004 20:37