Demos always tend to be smiled at. They are the everlasting joke of black metal’s so often gatekept “true” form. So raw, so direct, so instant that the record can’t even be finished. Just an unprocessed mess that sounds like recorded by a microphone covered by a can standing in the room next door. But this cliché mostly misses the appeal of the pureness of the sole idea. Sometimes we just find demos that resemble a sketch, the start of a wonderful thought that forms from the listener’s point of view. Today we are talking about such a work that may well could be seen as just that.

Mainländer‘s music is pretty much a well-known approach to atmospheric black metal. At least on the instrumental side. Thriving blast beats, relentless tremolo picking and slow melodies form the dark ambience that flows from ABM as all fans just love it. An interesting touch comes through the sacral organ intro and outro of the two tracks on this demo offer. Matching the band’s concept they form a foundation from this old memory of the 19th-century European, Christian habitus found in nearly all aspects of culture, art and science. And that’s where Mainländer‘s concept comes in. Phillip Mainländer was a 19th-century author and philosopher of deeply pessimistic teachings. One of his ideas was that the will of life is the means of the will of death, so life only exists for death. What other music to match this than the darkest and most atmospheric metal?

The two tracks are pretty raw production-wise, but as mentioned: it’s a demo. We also heard many full-length raw BM albums with lower quality, so it’s pretty easy to imagine that the band puts some real effort into this and that the results of the first real release could be really exciting!

 

⚔️ MAINLÄNDER ⚔️

BC: https://mainlander666.bandcamp.com

IG: https://www.instagram.com/mainlander_records_666