Search - Geist :: Galeere

Black Metal From The Depths

Musical Warfare | Seattle, WA, USA | 03/12/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Like Isis's Oceanic and Ahab's Call of the Wretched Sea before it, Geïst's new album makes grandiose claims about musically capturing the essence of the seas. And while Galeere perhaps falls a bit short of this lofty description, that doesn't stop it from being a pretty damn good album.



Unlike Isis's expansive sludge or Ahab's crushing doom, Geïst's ocean-worship takes the form of epic, mournful black metal. Galeere is driving and blasting in some places and doomy and ambient in others, but it mostly sticks to a driving moderate pace, letting the massive guitar sound crush the listener beneath it while the hateful German spewings of vocalist Cypher D. Rex cut through the sound.



The production on the album is great, and really the only thing to pick on is some of the weird ambient sounds that the band threw in to add to the nautical theme (morse-code beeps? really?). If you're looking for comparisons, Geïst's sound is vaguely reminiscent Satyricon's, and they also sound a bit similar to German label-mates Farsot. Like Farsot's IIII last year, Geïst have created an album that isn't going to wow you with its technicality or originality, but it does have a pretty killer sound and really nothing to dislike, which is enough to make it hard to pull out of my CD player. Plus the cover art is seriously awesome."