Is there anything more harsh sounding than German Black Metal? That's the question I've been pondering listening to VEHEMENZ frontman's Inclusus' guttural, rasping vocals.

He really does spit every word as if it was his last.  Imagine if EX DEO'S Maurizio Iacono  smoked several packets of Marlboro Reds and drank a ton of Jack Daniels with Lemmy, stumbled down the road, got mangled by a madman welding a rusty spanner and decided to sing his farewell in German? Yeah, you're kind of halfway there as to what Inclusus sounds like. He's bloody good.
Vocals aside, VEHEMENZ have not one, not two, but three guitarists! However, these aren't the only unique strengths of the band, who hail from Hammelburg, Bayern. And funny band member names/alter-egos aside (as is the cliché of Black Metal) they are a force to be reckoned with.

"Bote de Nichts" starts the album in fine style, a march of a track with screams over clean guitars, building to blastbeats and cacophonic riffs.

For me track three, "Fragment" was the highlight and a real testament of what the band can do. It has clean guitars throughout building to a chugging bridge with plenty of fret bending and a section of acoustic loveliness, leading to heavier guitars building up to a solo and then further riffage that fades out the song and then unexpectantly goes back into vocals at the last moment.

My favourite thing about the album is how listenable, melodic and atmospheric it actually is. The band spin a rich web of textures throughout the album.

VEHEMENZ are an accomplished bunch of musicians and the album is a study in how progressive Black Metal or whatever you want to call the genre should sound.

In the band's official bio, they say they like to hold themselves to a certain standard in their music as not to sink into a "mundane rut" and I think they have challenged themselves, and me, the listener on this release.
Think I'm going to head off and check out some more German metal now...