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Waldgeflüster - Knochengesänge I & II
Out now via aop records - Waldgeflüster’s Knochengesänge I & II stands as the band’s most ambitious work to date, a double album that functions as both a reflection and a rupture. Conceived and recorded between autumn 2024 and spring 2025, it is less a pair of records than a single body split in two, one rooted in the band’s established atmospheric black metal form, the other stripped bare and rebuilt through alternate languages of sound.
Knochengesänge I carries the familiar markers of Waldgeflüster’s identity. It draws from their Bavarian landscape and emotional austerity with tremolo guitars woven with folk melodies and blackened intensity tempered by reflection. Songs “Bamberg, 20. Juni” and “Von Hypnos und Thanatos” embody that balance between aggression and mourning, while guest appearances from Austin Lunn and Alboin lend weight without disrupting the core vision. It’s the sound of the band at full strength, steeped in texture and history, confronting themes of mortality and legacy through layered instrumentation and melodic resolve.
Knochengesänge II begins where the first ends, not as continuation but deconstruction. Every song traces its origin back to Part I, yet each is recast through fragility and restraint. Folk, ambient, and post rock replace distortion and blast beats. Strings by Charlie Anderson, piano by Arvagr, and contributions from Austin Lunn reveal the same emotional architecture in softer tones. It feels more like memory than repetition, the echo of something once immense now rendered intimate.
Together, the two records form a meditation on impermanence. The first asserts life through creation and the second accepts its erosion. Waldgeflüster dismantles and rebuilds its own language, offering not duality but resolution, a long exhale after years of endurance. Knochengesänge I & II are less albums than companion states, one breathing into the next until nothing remains but silence and light.
8/10
Words by @fuegocasa
In collaboration with @headbangersaustralia
