I’d never heard of Endstille until their 2009 release, Verführer. The album name, coupled with a cover which featured Kaiser Wilhelm II holding a bloody butcher’s knife, was just too delicious to overlook. It turned out to be one of my surprise favorites of the year. I wouldn’t call it original. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Dark Funeral–high production value, a mix that highlights drums over guitar, lyrical themes regulated to war and anti-Christianity. But where I could never get into the latter band, Endstille really impressed me. The same description fits their new album.

Trenchgoat

Endstille achieve their power through brutality and relentless drive, coupled with an acute eye towards German history. Not too many black metal bands emerge out of Germany. It’s a country with more historical precedence for themes of death and violence than anywhere in Scandinavia, serving the style well, but for the same reason there’s a lot more controversy involved in embracing the subjects. Endstille have been accused of right-wing affinities, even mislabeled nsbm by some, but the lyrics are discernible enough to verify the absence of a political stance.

Something that make their lyrics more cutting, and perhaps more controversial in turn, is the deadpan expression they hold throughout both albums that I’ve heard. I can’t help but mention Marduk’s triumph of 1999, perhaps the most brutal black metal album in existence at the time. It was lyrically and musically extreme to such an extent that the band themselves couldn’t fully take it seriously. The cheesy rock and roll finish to Panzer Division Marduk, delicious track titles like Fistfucking God’s Planet and Christraping Black Metal… you knew they were having fun. With the one exception of Verführer’s cover art, Endsille manage to avoid any hint of enjoyment. The effect isn’t better, just different. You never smile with Endstille. The comic appeal is substituted for a more authentic brutality.

But Infektion 1813 does seem to be lacking in catchy moments. Marduk, for all their redundancy, were at their height capable of writing some unforgettable songs. Baptism By Fire probably gets stuck in my head more than any other black metal song out there. Closer to home, Verführer had a number of memorable spots. Suffer in Silence struck me most. It surprised me just now, listening to it again, to realize Iblis only shouts “fuck God’s kingdom” two times. Coming in the midst of a steady plod with nothing obvious to distinguish it, it is yet a line you can’t miss on your first listen to the album or forget afterwards. The track currently playing on the other hand, while good as a whole, possesses nothing with which to really distinguish itself.

Bloody H (The Hurt-Gene)

The other band I want to compare Infektion 1813 to is Carpathian Forest. Now, I am probably alone in thinking that Fuck You All!!!! is the best straight-up black metal album ever recorded, but suffice to say Carpathian Forest are among the most underrated big names in the genre. I didn’t realize my first few listens through Infektion that Endstille got a new vocalist. I thought Iblis just got a lot better. Zingultus, the new singer, sounds strikingly similar. But there is a certain shrillness to his still relatively deep vocals that made me immediately think of Nattefrost, where Iblis never did. Nattefrost is my favorite black metal vocalist, so there you go.

The other comparison to Carpathian Forest really stands out in this current track, Bloody H. It’s got beats you can really bang your head to. The album review I saw on Encyclopaedia Metallum described it as “driving black grooves via Darkthrone”, and that’s more accurate than I can word it, but with Darkthrone’s commitment to low production value the similarity isn’t so obvious. Rather, it made me think first and foremost of Fuck You All!!!. Consider that quite a compliment.

Ok, bear with me for a minute here. Yes, I just linked a Rammstein song. I haven’t listened to them since Sehnsucht came out in what, 1997? There’s really not much I can say about them. I could never get past the whole electronica thing, even when I was some idiot kid worshiping Korn and the like. But there was one song on that album that blew my mind at the time and, much to my surprise, listening to it for perhaps the first time in fourteen years, still does. I’m sticking Klavier in here to draw attention to that special thing about the German language that’s so stereotypical that it tends to be forgotten in practice: It sounds evil as fuck.

Eh, and maybe this song was my first introduction to tremolo picking and I never knew it. But whatever, moving on:

Endstille (Völkerschlächter)

The final track on Infektion 1813 is hands down the most brilliant thing I’ve heard by them, and it would be boring in any other language. I mean, the music consists of a seven second long riff that repeats for eleven minutes. The lyrics consist of Zingultus naming a bunch of historic figures. That’s it. That’s really it. It’s about as minimalistic as a black metal song could ever hope to be. And it’s one of the darkest songs I have ever heard.

Why? Because he names them all with a German accent, and because it’s not called “Mass Murder” or “Slaughter or the People” or anything like that. It’s called Völkerschlächter, and the music is so repetitive that only the words matter. The first time I really paid attention to it I sat in constant anticipation waiting to hear who he’d name next, each figure smashing me in the face with the atrocities they committed.

I’m not saying Infektion 1813 is extraordinary, or even necessarily as good as Verführer, but it’s one of the best black metal albums we’ll hear in 2011. Don’t let this one sneak by you.