Album Review: Coltaine, Brandung
Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, Coltaine arrive at the realizations of mood in Brandung following their 2024 album, Forgotten Ways (review here). That album was kind of a debut that wasn’t, which is to say, there was an aspect of the band having ‘figured it out’ in a new way, and maybe committed themselves to the development of a particular aesthetic in a deeper way more than they had with the prior EP, Gorit (discussed here), in 2023.
And while there’s no question their work over the last two years (so far) represents a distinct turn in their discography, the history of the band is inevitably more complex, with guitarist Moritz Berg and bassist Benedikt Berg (also cello, percussion) having founded the group under the name Witchfucker with more of a black metal bent. The name changed, changed again, as will happen. Two full-lengths were released in the 2010s, 2016’s Mutter Morgana and 2018’s Atomhure, before 2020’s Afterhour in Walhalla (discussed here) brought together the dark atmospherics with residual aural char to create a sound that lived up to its fire-against-a-darkening-sky cover art.
I note these releases and this more complex history to emphasize the point that what Coltaine achieve over the nine songs and 36 minutes of Brandung isn’t out of the blue, it’s the result of more than a decade of sonic progression and refinement of craft, the considered execution of an aesthetic, and a thoughtful production and arrangement of the songs. Brandung was co-engineered by drummer Amin Bouzeghaia (also guitar on several tracks) and Gregor Rieth, and it is organically textured in its layering and balance of elements (Jan Oberg of Grin, etc., mixed and mastered), with vocalist Julia Frasch providing key presence and human melodic contemplation throughout, beginning with the humming-along intro “Tiefe Wasser” (‘deep water’) leading into “Memories of Ice,” which establishes early that black metal is still a part of what Coltaine do, thereby setting up a threat of extremity that hovers over the remainder of the record while the band deftly take their sound elsewhere.
This is one of the subtle ways in which Brandung puts the listener where it wants them to be, affecting mood with material that, even when it’s not outwardly heavy in the loud, tonally brash sense — the melancholic post-heavy sprawlscaper “Above the Burning Sand,” for example — the fact that at any moment Coltaine might break into squibblies, blastbeats and throatrippers is never quite gone from the proceedings. It becomes a central facet and strength of the album, and is purely the result of intention on the band’s part in both songwriting and sequencing. It is also far from the last triumph Brandung heralds.
Most of them, as it should be, are in the songs themselves, and I note the winding path Coltaine have taken to get here not to contradict ‘second-album’ narratives around Brandung, but to appreciate the actual work, real-life effort put into their progression of sound. As dug-in as Brandung is, and as refreshingly individual as it sounds, it’s almost too easy to pretend it and they came out of nowhere, emerging from a crack in the ground with a fully-realized stylistic take. That can be a good but if fun if you’re a fan, but it ultimately devalues the artistry on display by removing the context of how they got there.
The brooding goth rock of “Keep Me Down in the Deep” with Frasch‘s drawling voice overtop, pulling together calm and restlessness. The chasmic affect of “Abyssal Sands” in following “Above the Burning Sand” as side B unfurls from the intro it’s given through the guitar build and ebb of “Wirbelwind” and the point of arrival that the title-track “Brandung” represents, its two-stage movement through shuffling, echoing doom rock into minimalist ambient reaches, prefacing the almost-YOBbian plucked notes of the epilogue “Solar Veil.” Coltaine are able to make it harsh, engrossing, gorgeous or deathly, and in the spirit of ungenred outfits like Crippled Black Phoenix, what their creativity seems most to be chasing is its own ends.
It would not be a surprise if the next Coltaine leaned more into black metal, but that it doesn’t feels honest in terms of the songs and the cogency of mood throughout. In the intros, interludes, short-instrumentals, whatever you want to call them — “Tiefe Wasser,” “Black Coral,” “Wirbelwind,” “Abyssal Sands,” “Solar Veil” — the four-piece do more than simply complement the more fleshed-out ‘songs.’ It’s not a case of this-was-half-a-part-and-we-made-it-a-thing, and the purpose these shorter pieces serve is beyond the decorative.
The transitions between are mostly defined — that is, the near-wash at the culmination of “Keep Me Down in the Deep” fades out completely before the standalone guitar of “Black Coral” begins to provide pastoralist sanctuary — but the fluidity of one track still informs the next, whether that’s the acoustic-integrated strum of “Memories of Ice” leading to the defined riff starting “Keep Me Down in the Deep” — a crucial moment of initial listener immersion — or the ritual-psych heavyfolk of “Wirbelwind” completing its in-the-woods-at-night ceremony before the low rumble sets the stage for the guitar floating at the outset of “Above the Burning Sand.” Brandung is rife with these details, within, between and among its songs, and as a result, across its span, it reaches into the ethereal while keeping at least one collective foot on the ground.
At its heart, that’s what makes Brandung a progressive work. It is considered unto its natural-sounding recording and the high-end vibrancy of its most shimmering resonances, and patient without being so indulgent as to lose either its own plot or the listener’s fickle attention. It ponders without being ponderous, and while that’s a thing to celebrate, the underlying message Coltaine are sending still feels related toward an ideal of growth. Do not, in other words, anticipate that whatever they do next — perhaps a pivotal ‘third’ album in the series begun by Forgotten Ways — will sound anymore precise to this as this does to the one before it.
There’s much to hear in the spirit of “Brandung” in both its loud and quiet stretches, but what comes through most of all to me is the transience of the moment being captured and the sense that Coltaine are unwavering from their forward direction. No doubt they’ve learned some important lessons about themselves and their sound with Brandung, while engaging a broader audience besides. How those will be applied over the next few years is among the more exciting questions the record asks, but hardly the limit of its interrogations.
Coltaine, Brandung (2025)
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Tags: Brandung, Coltaine, Coltaine Brandung, Germany, Karlsruhe, Lay Bare Recordings
