Going back home means being able to visit my cousin Pierre again. Our favorite activity is to share our most recent sonic discoveries while sipping on a cold one and looking for some trivia on the artists we are playing. He recently decided to enhance this experience a great deal by investing in one of the best bluetooth speakers I have ever come across: the Devialet Phantom 900.

Devialet Phantom 900, a bluetooth speaker straight out of a scifi movie

Pierre is an avid metal listener, and he has been for more than a decade now. He has been my source of information on the genre, which I have learned to love, especially after inadvertently meeting atmospheric black metal by searching in the harsher, more industrial realms of ambient back in 2015. I do not think Pierre has an actual preference for black over death metal, or let’s say it’s probably seasonal. At the moment he clearly is in a black metal fade, as his picks were mostly from French black metal bands like Deathspell Omega and Merrimack.

Last year, in one of our music sharing sessions, I made him listen to a Dutch band Boyan helped me discover: Darkspace. While this one will probably get its own article, it is important to mention here as it was the first and only time I was able to share a metal band to my cousin that he did not know and that he liked! He also could finetune his ear to understand what really caught my attention in metal in general, which as for most music I listen to is the ambience, the landscape it paints. I love deeply moody, evocational music and atmospheric black metal seems to be all about this, of course more focused on very dark and sorrowful themes than other genres, but there is a place for every feeling in music.

Anyway! Pierre in his search for atmospheric black metal singled out the album I would like to share with you today, saying: I know for a fact you will love this. And yeah, seems like my cousin knows me well. Lo and behold, Alpenpässe by the American band Minenwerfer, released in 2019, which not only is an exceptional music piece, but outdoes itself by rocking some of the best aesthetics I’ve seen… this photo of an Austrian sniper in the Alps… so beautiful.

Minenwerfer - Alpenpässe (2019)

It would truly be a crime to share a specific track from the album, which should be listened from start to finish in one seating for the full experience. Deeply sorrowful take on the Great War, this black metal album will often transcends genres by going full jazz fusion; mixing folkloric singing, sometimes going back to acoustic guitar in ways reminiscent of Black Sabbath and ending in a true Slayer’ish vibe with deep vibrato making guitar soli cry like thunderstorms. While I am drawing comparisons to some incredible acts, I would want to hammer the fact that Minenwerfer have carved their own style from all these inspirations. Truly marvelous piece. 10/10 would listen again.