At the Dark Dungeon Festival, which took place in a medieval castle in the small town of Anthisnes, the first band I saw were the Belgians from Räum, before Mightiest, one of the best, and unfortunately also most underrated black metal bands in Germany, and finally Enthroned, the Belgian black metal kings, took over. The band name alone struck me as unusual as a German, "Raum", without the umlaut, means room in German. And also purely visually the four musicians didn't look much like black metal. In this respect I guessed a post-black metal act, most of which I honestly find quite boring and stale. Fortunately, however, it behaves differently, Räum play rather very partly very fast, hard, often traditionally designed black metal, which in some moments even reminds of Marduk.
And as alredy mentioned, even if the four musicians visually so nothing connects with the Black Metal cliché, and also just the stageacting of the singer Olivier is too moving for the usual black metal vocalist, Räum offer in the four overlong songs (between seven and twelve minutes) of their debut great black metal material, which can be awarded the label "post" because of some quieter passages. Due to the overlength and some repetitive passages, a partly hypnotic effect of the songs arises in the frenzy, comparisons to Ultha from Cologne come to my mind during these passages. The last track "Beyond the black shades of the sun" can fully convince atmospherically with its melodic-atmospheric midtempo, I personally prefer the faster tracks, especially the opener "Andromeda", which after some wobbling guitar sounds changes into Nordic frenzy and builds up a really hypnotic-dark soundscape, pay attention to the guitar accents in the middle of the chaos, is the absolute highlight. Highly recommended! This work was released as a beautiful digipack CD and LP with the atmospheric artwork on Les Acteurs de l'Ombre Productions.