Quintessenz
To the Gallows

A one-man band marching to the gallows, where the albums will hang from the neck until dead and gone and there will be no more Quintessenz albums. That is of course not the case and this one-man black metal project might just as well be going on for a long time. This is the second album and it is called To the Gallows and it doesn’t look particularly exciting but what comes under the cover is what matters and it is as little exciting as the cover art is.

Black metal of the older-school kind, sounds like something lifted from the past. Cheapish production that lacks a bit of power, the vocals are quite dull and the album as a whole hardly ticks any of my boxes. There are no surprises here; we get more or less what you can expect from seeing the artwork. Although, the end is actually quite good so there are some interesting highlights even though I would still describe the 48 minutes this albums plays for as a waste of time.

I think this album sounds cheap and doesn’t really take off. I think this album lacks power, energy, emotion and feel, it is a bit dull and as it doesn’t take flight I don’t really think that it is an album that deserves much else other than what the title suggests. Sure it might be mean to say as the musician probably have put his heart an soul into it but to me the soul isn’t really there and I am a critic so I cannot really think of the effort only the end result and the end result isn’t to my liking.

But sure, should you like the oldish kind of black metal and don’t have super high demands on originality and those kinds of things it is conceivable that you could like the album. Toe I don’t really think that Quintessenz offer anything that haven’t already been done a lot better.

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