Playlouder - Music is the Network

This hushed and gloomy dirge-folk album is a sprawling, flawed masterpiece and, in my mind, their greatest work to date. Admittedly my knowledge of Sonne Hagal's back-catalogue is patchy, but to me, they have always struggled to truly forge their own identity amongst many powerful bands in mainland Europe like Of The Wand and the Moon and Darkwood. Perhaps I've not listened closely enough before?

Either way, this is a multi-instrumental, multi-lingual, brooding bordering-on-apocalyptic album, and the many guest appearances from peer bands (some known to me, some unknown - but representatives of the aforementioned two are included) do nothing to water down the strength of character than shines through and really carries this album.

The vocal style is half wistful and soft, half firm and threatening, but always very, very close in the mix: your ears are either being whispered or shouted down, and there's a touch of claustrophobia about the rendering of the sympathetic but modern folk arrangements.

'Midsummernight', to my (pretty untrained) ears recalls the militaristic moments of Dies Natalis, while songs like 'Vengeance' and 'Who Has Seen the Wind?' will certainly be palatable to anybody who enjoys Tony Wakeford's music, although if you are aware of Sol Invictus, you may well also be aware of Sonne Hagal already, and have long since accepted them as their own reference point.

'Herr Gilbhardt' is dark folk proper and makes we want to learn German.

'Jordansfrost' seems like a long journey at times, and yet it's about average length for an LP, I suppose. The constant tone and pace makes for an almost trance-like state at times, and yet each song really can stand on its own merit when heard alone. This is a clear, strong, respectable body of work, and here's one noteworthy folk outfit.

The sad fact remains that it's still difficult for any German bands, particularly ones who embrace or incorporate traditional folk music and themes, to make it big in the UK. A lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction that makes them suspicious of this music, which sometimes has the unfortunate propensity to attract a following from undesirable quarters, just as punk did.

The following amusing, if quite serious, missive from a recent blog of theirs bears witness to this:

"Whilst you enjoy our art and music please have in mind that we're not involved in political issues, especially no right-winged. So, if you're a kind of nazi-scum: fuck off and die!"