(DGR has detoured off most of our well-beaten paths to bring us his review of the latest offering from the Norwegian band Gothminister, which was released late last week by AFM Records.)
I recently crossed the twenty-year mark of following Norway’s Gothminister, the result of an initial missing of the musical bus years ago and then a hurricane-force tour through their specific music scene way back in 2004 – courtesy of a gentleman I used to play Twisted Metal 2 PC online with. Having been sent “The Holy One”, it was difficult to not get hooked on Gothminister‘s hybrid of dancy-electronics and industrial metal.
It’s a hybrid that has held on strong too, even throughout a good-sized handful of lineup shifts over the course of the band’s career. They’ve become a comfort-food band for me, the music not overwhelmingly challenging and metal enough to scare the ‘normies’ among us but otherwise digestible near-pop in its assault. Sing-song worthy with a march to them, Gothminister have been a group that – for me anyway – are a tremendous amount of fun in their embrace of camp and caricature.
Since we have a little bit of free space in the release calender there was a goblin-esque part of me that declared ‘what if you did manage to get them on to the front of the site?’, knowing full well they’d likely be spaced in between death metal heavy enough to collapse buildings or black metal sharp enough to scrape concrete smooth. “What if…,” said goblin proclaimed, “we just reviewed the group’s most recent release even though there’s been little to no mention of them before on the site?”
“But it’s a sequel album,” I said. “We’ve never even covered the first Pandemonium“. “Even more funny,” stated goblin-DGR, “because now people have to wrap their heads around the idea of Pandemonium II: Battle Of The Underworlds with little to no explanation or context of what preeeded it”
And alas, here we are.
Gothminister have existed as much as a spectacle as they have as song crafters. One has always been in service of the other in that aspect. They aren’t breaking new grounds or advancing their genre, but are instead all about putting on the show, with some good-to-great music to back it up. Even the form they take now on Panedomnium II: Battle Of The Underworlds is one that was almost carved into a cliff face way back in the days of 2005 with Empire of Dark Salvation. Have they gotten heavier or embraced some more metallic aspects in that time? Yes, there are a few examples throughout their career, but they certainly got more floor-stompy with albums like Anima Inferna in 2010 and Utopia following it.
The dancefloor electronics side of things took a backseat in their sound for close to a decade but it was always present in some form. It was just that for a long period Gothminister made an honest effort to be a guitar-driven rock band first, before slowly working a lot of what they started out as back into their formula.
You could argue that since Happiness In Darkness vocalist Bjørn Alexander Brem has existed way in the forefront and the band is just as much a vehicle for him and his character as it is a musical outlet, yet the group’s lineup hasn’t changed tremendously over the years. The one reliable aspect will always be, in one form another, Bjørn – replete with dirt and blood-covered funeral suit. He’s likely what the first aspect you’ll be exposed to when firing up another Gothminister album.
Pandemonium II: Battle Of The Underworlds is a lighter concept album wrapping around exactly what you might expect based off of the title. Gothminister uses the idea of differing underworld legions at war with one another for framework, more than portraying particular characters throughout. The lyrical inspiration provided by the idea finds its way into a few different songs including the titular “Battle Of The Underworlds” – which the band released in late 2023, partially as an announcement of things to come alongside “I Am The Devil”.
Hooks abound throughout the album, and given Gothminister‘s anthemic and guitar-driven nature, you quickly recognize the formula that comprises much of their music. I’ve often proclaimed them as one of the ultimate shuffle bands, as they’ve mostly hovered at a six or seven on the intensity scale but, they’re higher on the fun side of things if you love the idea of a deeper-voiced singer exhorting to the world all the action of vampires, zombies, freakshows, and in the case of Pandemonium II; Battle Of The Underworlds…”Creepy Shadows”, which believe it or not is actually one of the better (and for the nature of this site, heavier) songs on this album.
Now eight albums in over the course of a two-decade career, Gothminister do have a little bit of predictability to them. They waste no time getting to the chorus – remember, we’re leaning more hard-rockin’ than full-on heavy metal, though the double bass pedal gets a good workout in a few songs – and I’d be able to win more than my fair share of sodas by betting people that at one point or another said chorus will consist of the song title being intoned in grave and serious nature.
Does that mean you’ll actually have the opportunity to yell “I Am The Devil!” and “I Will Drink Your Blood” like the song titles place in the neon lights of the theater marquee? Oh yeah. In fact, the only song that may not overtly summon the spectre of its song title might be one of the last two on the album in the swaying dynamics of “Monostereo Creature”.
For the most part Pandemonium II: Battle Of The Underworlds is a party of an album. It wraps itself around a constant stomping rhythm and falls in line with much of Gothminister‘s overall works post 2008’s Happiness In Darkness. It’s big arena-worthy guitar riffs and massive rhythm stomps, all built around a heavy deep lyrical intonation proclaiming to the world tales of monsters, vampires, werewolves and all of the horror-show nightmares in between. They’ve drawn from this well many a year now and having a conceptual framework this time has somewhat rejuvenated the ‘spectacle’ side of the band so that they can truly do work.
Not every song nails it; “One Dark Happy Nation” is a little too yo-ho drinking song for my liking but that’s been a character flaw on this end for some time now. The swaying beers back and forth musical rhythm does little for yours truly; I get much enjoyment out of it with Amon Amarth‘s “Heidrun” on The Great Heathen Army and it doesn’t get much swayer as one of the main rhythms of “One Dark Happy Nation” and its anthemic chorus.
The batting average for fun and booming songs, with keyboard lines dancing in and out above them, otherwise is still fairly high on Pandemonium II. It turns out, even as the band have become something of an old guard for this particular listener, world-weary and leather armors long worn down, they’re still great fighters for the style and fun as hell to listen to.
https://gothminister.bfan.link/pandemonium-ii-the-battle-of-the-underworlds
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