REVIEW ORTUS "AUS DER TIEFE" (ENGLISH)

I already reviewed ORTUS from Rhineland-Palatinate with their debut EP called "Where shadows gather" (see HERE.) This was released in 2018, and in an interview I read that at least a part of the band takes a certain critical distance to the EP and sees this first release retrospectively more as the first steps of musical self-discovery. Well, be that as it may, I was thrilled at the time and still find this EP very good. This release was followed in 2019 by the "Forgotten Memories" EP, which was again very convincing.  

Now, with "Aus der Tiefe" (German for "From the depths"), another work is available, which can be regarded as an EP or an album depending on how you look at it, the band themselves see it as their debut album. It contains two tracks, which have a playing time of 17 and 16 minutes respectively. The title track begins with ominous synth carpets and a wistful, suffering guitar, which allows first associations with many Norwegian black metal early works, before the piece is then packed into a racing, clashing black metal corset. As the song progresses, there are also midtempo passages, a lot of melody, plaintive clear vocals and even a short passage with a kind of "tribal drumming", all of which develops coherently and naturally into a flowing whole.

The second track "In nächtlicher Stille" ("In nocturnal silence") also offers a good mixture of faster and slower passages, which are also accompanied by bloodcurdling screams and sporadic clear vocals. Overall, this second track cannot quite reach the intensity of its predecessor, but at the end of the piece and thus of the whole album, there is an atmospheric, repetitive-hypnotic piano / synthesizer part to be heard.

So if you want to discover traditional, but not stale and really rousing black metal with the right mixture of heaviness, rawness and atmosphere beyond the already well-known names, you should definitely listen to Ortus. As references I simply give the old Scandinavian masters, but also bands like Lunar Aurora, Nagelfar or Ruins of Beverast, the latter come to my mind just because of the somewhat more "experimental" touch or the variability with which the band goes to work, so that the pieces never get boring despite being overlong. Personally, I'm surprised anyway that the band isn't better known yet, but that's probably not the aim, which I can only welcome in principle in these times full of narcissism and self-overestimation. Nevertheless, it hurts my soul a little that these two pieces will also pass many listeners by who would appreciate them very much. The interesting cover artwork allows for versatile interpretations, especially with regard to the title. The CD is limited to 300 copies, published by the newly founded label "Schierling Klangkunst" and can be purchased via the Ortus bandcamp page.