TOTENBURG, Endzeit  (2009, Nebelfee Klangwerke)

The skull:
A warming, homey sort of design as you might see adorning a panel of an antique porcelain stove. Gramma Rosenstein has one of these stoves, and she makes the most delightful challah. That’s a cute little bow tieing up the crossbones too. C’mon gramma, fire it up and…oh wait…Totenburg sing about what? And they’re German? Oops. Sorry, gramma. Not funny.

The music:
These guys play black metal delivered with a militaristic mid-paced churn, and when they take it above 100 mph, they do it with great ability, all clanging ride cymbals and mad blizzards of trebly guitar. They’re pretty okay at what they’re doing, but lose me totally with their NS/white power bullshit. Luckily the lyrics are in German, so if you aren’t too PC about this sort of thing, and you like Endstille and Marduk and need yet more average-but-adequate black metal in your musical diet, you would probably find some enjoyment in their brand of hateful noise. They’ve been doing it since 1998 and, quite likely because they are, politically, a bunch of assholes, nobody’s really taking much notice as of yet.
— Friar Wagner