Ready to dissolve souls in their highly acidic riffs again after searching for a new vocalist, Depressive Black Metallars SCHATTENFALL are back with an even more cynical attitude than ever in their sophomore album, Melancholi des Seins. Tales of self-imposed isolation and mysterious passages told by German and Hungarian poets, Melencholie des Seins has ennui soaked into every pore. Vladamir Baur's vocals strain under pressure. Yuri Kononov's fluid cymbal crashes become a waterfall of noise in the background; a cascading well spring inside a dark cave filled with shrieking bats.

Howling choruses wail above the blackened noise in "Erst nicht geboren" like the damned voices of BATUSHKA. The instrumentals of the "Einsamkeit" triptych have an introspective quality, droning through the minutes, the vocals taking on dreadful levels of depressive energy that hungers for some primal urge to cause destruction. Peaceful lulls of acoustics are quickly and thoroughly silenced under steamrolling riffs that trundle through bleak landscapes.

SCHATTENFALL slowly dissolves any resemblance of ego as the album progresses, any gentleness in its intros are but frail and easily breakable fronts designed to try and hide SCHATTENFALL's true nature. With atmospheric storm cells that brew and rage like HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, the tumultuous weather that is barely contained in Melancholi des Seines screams like a haunted thunderstorm. With the third movement of "Einsamkeit" the atmosphere shifts to a darkened dusk expecting heavy rain any moment, the air heavy with petrichor, everything still as if nature herself is holding her breath.

Anchor SCHATTENFALL's last album Schatten en Schwarz screams similarly into a similar raging storm, the cacophonous cymbals ring and buzz like thousands of swarming cicadas. The doom and gloom still just as potent if not a little more lost, vocally. SCHATTENFALL exists to drown out all the light of the world and plunge straight into the cold black seas of despair.