Artist: Siegfried
Label: Napalm Records
Release: 2009
Length: 43:19
Rating: 3/5
Siegfried are an Austrian band. They’re eleven years old, and “Nibelung” is the third installment in their take on the Nibelung ring concept. So, their third album overall, and to be honest, they allowed themselves quite a long break between 2003, when “Eisenwinter” came out, and 2009. Now they’re closing out the whole concept of this notorious tale from Germanic mythology, which has already been tackled by plenty of artists before them. It’s inspired everyone from Richard Wagner (the opera tetralogy “Der Ring des Nibelungen“) to the German Teutonic old-school metal lumberjacks Grave Digger (“Rheingold”, 2003) and Fritz Lang, who in 1924 directed two short silent films (the duology “Die Nibelungen”).
Siegfried aren’t discovering anything new. The songs are built in classic power metal fashion. The guitar riffing is propped up by double bass drum pedals, which love to gallop along as the “chassis” of the songs. That’s often “cut up” by passages of mid-tempo or slowed-down sections (Saschsensturm).
But in terms of arrangements, the band doesn’t sit on their hands. Epic power metal is, at its core, a worn-out, chewed-over form that has nothing new to say, and that goes for Siegfried too. The band doesn’t even care, because they believe in what they do. And so with “Nibelung”, despite being shoved into narrow genre boundaries, Siegfried manage to carve out enough room to maneuver, which actually gives “Nibelung” an artistic sense while you listen and manages to convince with its message. Siegfried pull off this much-needed shaking up of the basic genre template mainly through three lead vocalists who trade off depending on the roles in the album’s conceptual backdrop. There are the female clean vocals, handled by Sandra Schleret (also the singer in gothic power metallers Elis), the male clean vocals, contributed by Werner Bialek, and the distorted vocals, or in plain talk just the “croaking”, which comes from the band’s boss Bruder Cle. Thanks to the three vocalists, Siegfried are a septet!
The three vocals offer a glimpse into both the vulnerability and the strength of using German in the verses. The female voice brings the most melody here, while the male clean vocals bring the least credibility. The “croaking” is actually the most thrilling part of the German verses on “Nibelung”, even if at times it comes across as theatrically childish (almost whiny and grotesque) in its straining to bring the album’s concept to life. Still, the interplay of the three voices is the main source of the variety that “Nibelung” needs. The six-year break was also undoubtedly useful, since Siegfried thoroughly strained their ideas during that time and picked the most polished song forms to dress up with arrangements. The arrangements clothe the basic form of the guitar phrases with a rich use of symphonic elements, alternating between epic outbursts from a string section and the simple addition of classical piano (in the calmer moments of the album).
Interestingly, the song Fafnir is the lead track from a demo that already came out in 2000 as the EP “Fafnir”. The band sensibly worked individual songs from that EP in, depending on the story tied to the concept of the three albums. Fafnir only found its place in this album trilogy on the third one, “Nibelung”. It’s fun to compare the more mature arrangement of the new version with the old one.
Among the more interesting guitar phrases on the album, it’s worth singling out the bold combination of the lead motif with the interweaving vocal approaches of the three singers in the song Die Prophezeiung, where the dramatically dark atmosphere hits hardest on the whole album in sum! Later on, within the chorus of the song Brunhild (Sandra’s lead vocal pulls the song above average), the band keeps up an effective ebb and flow of moods!
“Nibelung”, the album that closes the trilogy of Siegfried’s conceptualized story, is a step forward in maturity. In terms of arrangements, polished tightness, convincing creation of many different moods, and the album’s wickedly dark atmosphere. Despite its predictable form, it will give fans of the genre quite a few interesting hours of enjoyment and is well worth giving a shot.
Given the mostly meager, barren messaging of Austrian bands in the realm of metal music, Siegfried have proven with “Nibelung” that in the field of epic power metal they rank above the quality average of our northern neighbor’s bands. When it comes to metal, Slovenes can definitely learn a thing or two from the Austrians. The problem is just that in Austria money finds its way into supporting metal music, while here, sadly, it mostly isn’t used to protect metal music. So the Austrians have the powerful label Napalm Records, which can also back bands that are shooting totally blanks with their message, while Slovenian metal bands have to fight their way through on sheer will to survive and by digging into their own pockets, which are already thoroughly picked clean! But that’s a story for another time.
Lineup
Sandra Schleret – vocals
Werner Bialek – vocals
Bruder Cle – vocals
Daniel Bachmaier – guitar, keyboards
Hannes Krause – keyboards
Roland Wurzer – bass guitar
Moritz Neuner – drums
Production
Alexander Krull
Tracklist
1. Der Ring der Nibelungen
2. Fafnir
3. Die Eisenfaust (Alberich)
4. Die Prophezeihung
5. Brunhild
6. Sachsensturm
7. Totenwacht
8. Der Todesmarsch
9. Die Götterdämmerung
