This is no fun record! Winterkälte (translated as "cold of winter") is a duo from Germany playing "rhythmic power noise" and this classification describes their music well. There is a lot of layered noise, combined with pounding machine-like rhythms. There is no sign of human life on this record, no vocals, no sign of guitar plucking or any other musical instruments that require human interaction.

There are not even real melodies, nothing you can hum along with, only mechanic rhythms that drift in and out and develop over the rather long tracks. Screeching metallic sounds and distortion are all over the place. Some tracks are recorded as pure overmodulation. The casual listener might think that the engineer must have been asleep during the recording, but seen in the context of the album it is all done on purpose.

The meaning of all this is hidden in the track titles: NOx Over Europe, Erosion, Slash-And-Burn, El Nino, Maximum Credible Accident, ... What kind of sound would you expect from titles like that?

There is not very much that is recognizable as melody on this album. However the noises are as varied as noise possibly can be. Once you get used to the very harsh sounds you can start to recognize their very unique patterns and to decipher the codes. It is surely an uneasy listening experience, but it is a rewarding one. The perfect soundtrack to the destruction of the natural environment at the end of the millennium.

If you are interested in this release you will probably have a hard time finding it since the label Hands is a very small one with virtually no marketing budget, but this kind of music is not easily marketable. Winterkälte's Structures of Destruction is available on CD and triple vinyl in aesthetically pleasing and fitting packaging.

Copyright © 1999 Lonely Locke