Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
One person’s chaos is another’s organised anarchy, and for the one who stands between the two states of being, it is the upheaval of the tornado of souls that scatters all life around them who can, for a while at least, appreciate the natural order of division.
Chaos, Schattenmann’s third studio album, is a combination of high intensity metal, but one delivered with the preciousness of steadfast observation in a world that requires tough love, but one that also feels that art and all its creativity is a finer way to show humanity and civilisation that quite often that what we perceive as chaos is actually continual revolution.
For Schattenmann, chaos is the heart of the matter, not adding to it, but decrying certain beliefs that have come to dominate our collective existence in the 21st Century, social media perhaps with its incessant omni-essence, it’s structure becoming ever more aware, the diseased storm that has clouded our minds for the last two years, the pressure of life in a construct that doesn’t just create chaos, but damns all to partake in an upheaval without the benefit of anarchy and revolution.
Across uncompromising tracks such as Abschaum, Cosima, Alles auf Anfang, and the directness of Extrem, Schattenmann, what is noticeable and applauded is how the group have moved on, how they have shattered the mirror of self-confinement to which many of their peers blindside themselves into, and in their own style and grace to which the music most certainly attends and showcases, they explode with unbending power that destroys the tornado around them and leaves the listener feeling staunch an committed to bringing revolution and change to the world, whilst consigning chaos to the bin of theory in its wake.
A classic album of the genre, all things to those devoted to the new wave of German musical expression, Chaos is the new resolution.
Schattenmann’s Chaos is out now and available from AFM Records.
Ian D. Hall