Örök — Übermensch
Örök diverts slightly from the well-trodden ground covered by most bands who ape this style. repetition is one of the driving forces of atmospheric black metal, but Örök forsakes this for noticeably more active songwriting. Massive walls of repetitive, reverb-laden tremolo riffs are the exception rather than the rule on Übermensch. While these moments do occur during the album’s 50 minute runtime, they are few and far between. Instead, this album leans on repetitive chords, strummed over and over again with slight changes. Off in the distance, a solitary guitar plays eerie melodies at times, and devilishly dissonant twists the next. The effect is fairly similar to the early Burzum template with some guitars pulling rhythm duties while a melody is repeated above. The strength of this particular method suffers greatly from a lack of repetition and the subtle changes found on Burzum’s material. The segments last no more than a minute or two before lapsing to atmospheric nothingness. Repetition is the key to driving home the weighty atmosphere attempted by this project, but the frequent shifts prevent that from happening.
Oddly enough, the only parts that feature repetition effectively are the atmospheric parts where everything more or less drops out of the picture. The guitars play a single tremolo note or go through a spiraling, psychedelic sounding pattern for good lengths of time before careening off into more Burzum inspired black metal or more traditional atmospheric routes with blast beats and massive tremolo walls. However, these moments where the blast beats and massive riffs come in present a problem as well: the terrible programmed drums. On the rest of the album, they play a pretty minor role and don’t draw much attention to them. During the blast beats they are unbearable. Not only are they too loud in the mix, they also have one of the worst drum sound I’ve heard in months. It’s actually painful to listen to them in places.
Apart from the lack of repetition and drum sounds, Übermensch is a fairly nondescript album. Safe and bland, there’s nothing that really stands out or demands multiple listenings. At times it just nearly manages to envelope the listener in a vortex of howling vocals and atmospheric guitar lines, but just before it succeeds, Örök needlessly changes things up. I’m not sure if this is the result of being too cautious or knowingly avoiding repetition, but it’s something that needs to be addressed. The riffs themselves are more or less industry standard - not bad but nothing attention grabbing. On the whole, Örök very nearly has something worth listening to with Übermensch, but they’re not quite there yet. Maybe worth checking out in the future, but not right now.