Band : Totenmond

Album title : Thronräuber

Label : Massacre

Distributor : Sure Shot Worx

Release date : 25/04/2008

Release : CD

Jeez...I wasn't exactly looking forward to finally sitting down to review this album...because it meant putting an end to repeated enjoyable listening sessions which started some 4 weeks ago when I got the CD handed over to me by the editor-in-chief. Well...in all honesty I was somewhat anxious to try it out, and thus swiped it from the job-load of our Death Metal specialist with the only excuse that he was already getting enough to do. Sure, so was I, but then I have no family to look after and spend a fair amount of time with...and I dó enjoy my occasional portion of more brutal sounds every now and then!

As I said, I was somewhat interested in Totenmond in advance, most probably because I'd read reviews of previous albums and something stuck in my mind. I was amazed to find out that this band's history can be traced back all the way to 1984, when guitarist Olaf "Pazzer" and drummer Sven P. Genz founded their Punk outfit Wermut , who mainly played in youth clubs. In '86 they were joined by lead singer Attila who left after only a year to be replaced by Schiff (the latter staying with the band until 1989).

In 1990 the band was re-named to their current monicker ( Olaf taking on lead vocals from now on), and a year later they were joined by bassist Roberto Garcia . Olaf has since written all lyrics. Still continuing to play mainly in youth clubs, Totenmond released 3 demos between 1993 and 1996, releasing their debut album Lichtbringer (which has since become a classic) through Massacre in 1996. The band's profile was positively altered overnight, and they toured throughout Germany with Atrocity , Heavenwood , and In Flames . 1997 saw the release of the 4-track Väterchen Frost , and the band got invited to play at the prestigious Wacken Open Air , Dynamo Open Air , and Force-Attack-Festival festivals...after which they first did a European tour with Crisis and Spudmonsters , before again touring through Germany with Orphanage and Within Temptation . Sophomore album Fleischwald was released in '98, and followed by renewed invitations to 1999's Wacken Open Air and Force-Attack , as well as a visit to With Full Force ...after which the band again set out on a European tour (with Bolt Thrower , Crowbar , and Disbelief ). After the release of their 2000 album Reich In Rost the bassist left the band. The album's cover artwork brought some controversy, and lazier people were enticed into believing the band had facistoid inclinations...something which is strongly contrary to the band's occasonally metaphorical lyrics, and the band would react by including the typical "Gegen Nazis" logo (a fist crushing a swastica) in the booklets of future albums. 2001 saw the remaining duo make a Punk-styled take on songs originally recorded by '80s bands Slime , Razzia , Boskops , Ohl , Inferno , Ton Steine Scherben , Chaos Z , EA (as well as some old songs by both Wermut and Totenmond ) for the covers album Auf Der Mond Ein Feuer . 2002 saw the line-up again grow with the addition of bassist Senf , enabling the band to again play the With Full Force festival in 2003. Since then the band has released two more albums (2004's Unter Knochen and 2005's TonbergUrtod ).

Personally, I feel it's somewhat amazing that this band has never made it big outside the German speaking parts of Europe, because their mix of Grind, Doom Crust and Metalcore is certainly effective enough! I could go on about each and every song on the album to explain the way each song is structured, but that would really take out a lot of your time. Better to state that in my career as a "music journalist", I come across an enormous amount of bands, many of which will not bring such and effectively melodic and massive sound as this trio of musicians. One need only to listen to album opener "Lucifer Stampft" (incidently, the album closer with a quite different alternate version of the same song), to understand that these guys are close to genius. Anthough the guitar riffs are fairly simple they are nevertheless catchy, and in fact it's mainly the driving force of the double bass drumming which makes the whole so impressive! Of course, what with Olaf bringing his lyrics in his own typical style (a rough declamation-styled kinda thing) and more importantly: in his mother tongue, a lot of people will probably pull up their noses in advance. Weird, when you see that such heavily promoted acts like Rammstein , or the recently hyped Tokio Hotel (which is even further removed in musical terms) are reaping success worldwide! Apparently the band must be doing good enough in Germany, or otherwize the band would not still be singed to the same label since their debut.

In short, I would like y'all to set aside your prejuduces and give this German band a try by surfing to myspace.com/todistfreude, where you'll only find the one track off the new album, but also a total of 5 tracks off other releases. If you're interested in the lyrics, surf to the "Texte" section on the band's website totenmond.de (which is actually up for some up-dating, I would say). As far as I am personally concerned, I've got another band on my "want"-list next time I go into town and in the direction of the record store!

98/100

Tony.