Vladimir Bauer is a musician originally from Odesa in Ukraine but based in Germany since 2017. He is best known for his band Schattenfall, whose music we’ve written about frequently over the years (as you can see here), and for his work in the early years of White Ward. But Bauer has another project named Der Ghul, and it’s the black metal of Der Ghul we’re focusing on today.
Der Ghul released a debut EP (available on Bandcamp here) named Pulse of Awakening in 2019 (which included Stefan Traunmüller as vocalist), and that will soon be followed by a debut album entitled Hunger Anger Decay, which is set for release on May 17th. One song from the album has been revealed so far, and today we premiere a second one — “The Rat King“.
In that first song, “Under the Curse Mark“, madness reigns from the first seconds, cursed by swarming and writhing guitars that are intricate in their maneuvers but convulsive in their effects, coupled with magma-like bass lines, methodically hammering drums, and unhinged vocals, wild and raw in their howling intensity.
The vocals also bring deep and dire proclamations, which contrast with fire-bright darting fretwork and swirls of exultant melody. The high-speed madness of the glittering and sizzling riffage almost never cools, even when the bass and drums do, but only becomes more exhilarating as the song spins forward like some diabolical whirlwind.
It’s a thoroughly galvanizing and thoroughly head-spinning experience — and manages to get stuck in the head too.
The song we’re presenting today, “The Rat King“, comes with a lyric video, in which the rat king is the narrator, demanding to be uncaged so it can join its hated kindred to cleanse humankind of the waste in which humanity always drowns itself.
It’s also a wild escapade. It too creates an electrifying musical tapestry, a rich layering of vibrating and sparkling guitars, again augmented by rapidly changing percussive patterns and howl-at-the-moon vocals.
But in this song the sensations are more dreadful and dismal, especially when the rhythm section vanishes and the music becomes oppressive and doomed, moaning and clanging. But even when the bass rumbles in earthquake mode and the drums maniacally blast away, the derangement here seems sinister and menacing as well as enraged.
You’ll see that the words of the song also invoke another meaning of “rat king” — the name for the macabre real-world phenomenon in which collections of rats or mice are discovered with their tails intertwined and bound together.
On this new album Vladimir Bauer wrote and performed all the music and was also responsible for the lyrics and vocals. It was mixed and mastered by Yurii Zabelin. The cover art is “The Dance of the Rats” (1690) by Ferdinand van Kessel.
The album is available for pre-order now:
PRE-ORDER:
https://derghul.bandcamp.com/album/hunger-anger-decay
FOLLOW:
https://linktr.ee/derghul
https://www.facebook.com/DerGhulOfficial
https://www.facebook.com/SchattenfallOfficial/
