### Owl: Owl

#### 13/07/11 || Habakuk

Owl. Owl? Owl.

What’s more metal than a fucken Owl? Owls, and nuttin else. Maybe long-ass song titles. No, I haven’t made those up.

Anyway, from this day on, I want you to remember Owl as a two-man death metal band first and foremost, then (maybe) a nocturnal bird. What does it play then, Owl? Well, death metal, I just said so! But you’re of course right in not falling into my neatly prepared trap here, of course it’s not so simple. If it were, this band would not be called Owl, but Hacksaw Hallelujah or something.

And it would not involve a single person playing all instruments except for drums. And among them would not be synthesizers. And the songs would not slowly twist and turn like on a Portal record. And it wouldn’t be as hypnotically enticing. That is to say, Owl Owl Owl features a lot of very cool ambient-like soundscapes which provide some sort of breathing space within the dissonant, painfully stretched and oppressive song structures, and which make this disc best enjoyed as a whole, not in individual song portions. There is a strangely working groove throughout it all, so despite weird, “experimental” proceedings, there is a sense of coherence. Which is not self-explanatory with songs where not even the 4 hi-hat hits to set the beat are played straight. Also, tunes with around 8 minutes playing time – or 30, if you want to include lots of ambient rain sounds, normally aren’t among the most simple ones to arrange in an engaging way.

Owl however manage to do just that and their five songs, while not matching the greats like Ulcerate, are still quite a promising showcase of the darker, twistedly meditative side of death metal.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Zeitgeister
- Website: Owl on Zeitgeister Music
- Band
- Christian Kolf: guitars, vocals, bass, synthesizers
- Partrick Schröder: drums

- Tracklist

- 01. Conquering the kingdom of rain (Enter her holy halls)
- 02. Lost in vaults underneath the melting mountain of the saints
- 03. The daimonion of dying summers looming through the golden mist of dreams
- 04. Spell of the Ignis Fatuus that leads to the impalpable altar of beasts
- 05. Threnodical ritual at the spectral shores of the eternal sunset