Year: 2021
Total Duration: 79:30
Label: Nuclear Blast
The “Knights of the Apocalypse” from Weimar are active for many years and frequently among the names that are invited in the great European festivals. Being active since 1996, they recently released “The Divine Horsemen”, which is their twelfth full-length album. And when they say full-length they literally get the most out of it, since their last work is a double CD, lasting almost 80 minutes!
Getting to know DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER since the 2000’s with the release “All You Need Is Love”, they never stood still on one music style. In this album there are elements from almost all genres, which is also the case in this new release. Black metal, Death Metal, Extreme Metal, piano, ballads, pop/rock, Progressive, Alternative Rock, symphonic parts, Ambient and an intense humor diffused in the atmosphere.
The album begins with “Tiki”, a tribal caricature of SEPULTURA’s “Ratamahatta”, continues with a few minutes of Death metal and reaches the first long song of the album, the 9-minute “Inca”, an experimental composition of ambient style. The song “Nachtblume” that follows, is a relatively good example of Scandinavian frozen Black Metal, even though it remains unfinished, to be replaced by the mid tempo Black metal of “Aletheia”. We move on to the 12-minute “Duir”, a song that in the first half of it, includes piano with some intercalated sounds while it evolves into a post-rock crescendo.
The psychedelia of the 60’s makes its appearance in the 10-minute “Uelewa” that follows, with an unexpected change in a SLIPKNOT-aesthetic, to reach another long psychedelic composition called “Simbi Makya”, where Hammond’s delirium is the icing on the cake. In “Akhi” I almost got bored of clapping with its oriental tempo and improvisations, while the ending in “Eg On Kar” took me to the Sky Valley, ending the journey of the Divine Riders.
The album was recorded in mid-2020 amid the global lockdown and DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER wrote over 8 hours of material, eventually ending in those 80 minutes. Listening to “Divine Horsemen” my thoughts automatically went to the sound engineer and how much work he had to do in order to bring together so many kinds of music. Some parts are successful, others are not, it makes sense. However, there is almost nothing left in mind after listening to the album.
I can’t say to whom this record can be addressed to. I had liked DIEAPOKALYPTISCHEN REITER for their humorous perspective and their carelessness in the past, but for now I don’t feel the same, as this release got me tired.
Rating: 4/10
Author: Dimos Karadimos
External Link: DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER- Official Page
