The Celtic Winter
Occupation
- Vocals, electric guitar, keyboard Rob Darken
- Electric guitar, electric bass: Karcharoth
- Drums: Capricornus
The Celtic Winter is an EP of the Polish metal band Graveland. It was released in 1994 via Melissa Productions as an audio cassette. The under the same title, published in the same year CD version with three of the seven titles was supposed to appear on Hammer of Damnation Records, but the record company could not raise the necessary money; it was as a result of the record company No Colours Records released as their first release. In September 2008, The Celtic Winter, together with In the Glare of Burning Churches, Following the Voice of Blood and Immortal Pride by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young indexed ( list B).
Title list
The mini- CD was the first publication of No Colours Records Ever ( NC001 ), it contains only the title Hordes of Empire, The Gates to the Kingdom of Darkness and The Return of Funeral Winds, version 1996 ( NC010 ) contains all titles. In the list of publications by No Colours EP, however, due to the indexing appears under the name Evarg - TCW.
Shaping
The original cover shows a circle around a Heptagon surrounding a Heptagramm, in turn, is in the middle of a pentagram. On the CD cover, however, a photograph of a frozen landscape can be seen.
Style of music and texts
The Celtic Winter has been recorded in a professional recording studio and produces far better than the precursor In the Glare of Burning Churches, but still very harsh. The songs Hordes of Empire, Night of the Full Moon and the Gates of the Kingdom of Darkness are already (partly as bonus material ) published on this demo and winter were re-recorded for The Celtic.
The EP begins with an instrumental line; This begins with the blowing of the wind, until after about half a minute using a keyboard, come to the gradually louder sounds of a battle scene. The pieces are held in Grave country at that mid-tempo style and partially backed by keyboards.
Rob Darkens voice is backed by reverberation. According to John Chedsey of Satan Stole My Teddy Bear Celtic is part of the title of the publication probably no coincidence, as the guitars remind him of Celtic Frost's To Mega therion. The riffs " diverge to repeat the whole cycle then once or twice, thereby paving the listener into a fantastic realm of poetry and darkness pull ." Said Zach Zimmerman from Examiner.com
In the texts, the volume deals with incantations and war. It refers here, firstly, to the devil, Lucifer, Baphomet and " unclean spirits " and on the other hand to pagan gods and treated in the latter context, the revenge on the Christians for the killing of witches and druids in the past and for the old gods. With the line " Gods of the ancient ( aryan ) Europe" in the song Call of the Black Forest, the band refers to the "old ( Aryan ) Europe " and thus to National Socialism.
Reviews
Chedsey compared the sound of the guitars on The Celtic Winter with the Celtic Frost's To Mega therion; if you need an album as inspiration for his own band, but this is a very good choice. His biggest problem with this Graveland - disclosure was the knowledge of the later stylistic development of the band towards epischerem of Bathory Hammerheart album -influenced material. The Celtic Winter serves as a " decent travel, and even as an epilogue to Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales", however, was not his first choice when he was " eccentric entertainment" was in the mood for Rob Darkens. Zimmerman described the publication as " album in which to lose yourself ." It is " one of those albums that you listen for a while and wishes it would never end ", and good enough to achieve this effect years after the first listen.
Akhenaten of Judas Iscariot called The Celtic winter along with Burzum Det som var engang and DARKTHRONE Transilvanian Hunger as one of the three publications that were important for the development of his personal black metal ideal. Balor of Morrigan described the EP as " great publication."