Rare finds in the bleak midwinter with Nordlicht's Nebelmeer

If you're a regular visitor of this blog or have somehow landed here of your own accord, there's a good chance you are already familiar with the Swiss artist Tobias Möckl (a.k.a. Wintherr) and his involvement in the prolific projects Paysage d'Hiver and Darkspace. 

I've spent some time reviewing a couple of releases from both projects, even though a deeper dive is borderline mandatory and would be the perfect counterweight to surviving this dreadful summer. Apart from the interest in the discography, a more observant listener should have already noticed that Paysage d'Hiver material is consistently being released on Wintherr's own label, Kunsthall Produktionen.

Kunsthall has been operating essentially since the beginning of the project itself in the late '90s, almost exclusively licensing its own releases with very few exceptions (like Trist, Nordgeist and Devilgroth). What you might have missed is that back in the day, the label used to be co-ran with another individual named Nimosh, who also made music under the moniker Nordlicht.

Nordlicht from Bern released a full-length album named Nebelmeer in 2002, which is the sole and main release you'll find around. The album title (sea of fog) may have been inspired from the famous painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich, or it might just be a term similarity, we'll never know.

I've bought Paysage d'Hiver's Shnee (2020) compilation, which features the track "Schnee (III)" taken from a split of the project with Nordlicht way later, in 2017. And somehow, I still didn't pick up the memo for checking the latter too. It must have been an inner collaboration between the two musicians, for old times sake, but it has a 16-minute piece that I need to check out after listening to this album.

Nebelmeer consists of four main ambient black metal tracks, sprinkled with short interludes in between, yet the total length of the record is not anything like what you imagine from this description. Everything happens in just 28 minutes, but it somehow feels enough.

The pure dark ambient tracks are quite more varied than I would have guessed, often touching astral textures apart from the obvious wintry ones. I thoroughly enjoyed the moments of pure black metal, where Nordlicht focuses on riffs that don't shy away from repetition and aggression, sometimes even in the vein of Hate Forest.

This is especially clear on the first track "Winterweg", as a more traditional raw / atmospheric black metal pattern is adopted for the spacey followers "Nebelhall", and "Herbstrot". Wonderful piano segments can also be found around in their most exhausted form, as sometimes employed in Nortt, or yes, Paysage d'Hiver.

Vocals are high-pitched, distant and almost echoed, while drums are stripped down to the most basic form of monotony, almost as if they stand on the side for the rest of the instrumentation. The record has the infamous underground black / death metal distortion of its time and actually even earlier, as it would totally fit somewhere in the '90s too.

One of the moments I found the most interesting is the eerie guitar melodies of the last track "Nebelherr", followed by middle-paced offbeat riffing and some clean vocals. Nebelmeer may try to present itself as minimal, but there's surprising variation in such a short total length.

Of course, it's for fans only, and especially people into the music of the aforementioned bands from Switzerland. Even after all these years of frequent digging and searching, I somehow completely ignored the existence of this project or this album, until just a few days ago. Better late than never.

Kunsthall Produktionen