One man, one voice – one listening experience!
Rabengesänge is a courageous album that goes without instruments or better said it does not need any additional sound producing elements, because artist Karsten Liehm is endued with a daunting voice with four and a half octaves vocal range. The vocal acrobat created orchestral arrangements and overdubbed his voice up to 200 times. Sometimes the result sounds sacral, conjuring, then again sinister and threatening. Karsten elates with deep bass timbre as well as with felicitous overtone chants. The use of many languages fits the artful compositions best, contributing a lot to a real exquisite touch. Amongst others German, Old English or Berlin Rotwelsch (spoken in the 19th century) alternate. The songs are made for concentrated listening, they well-nigh demand this. Karsten narrates stories about wine, women and singing. Sometimes it happens that sentiments change radically. On fourth place we can listen to the track Fifteen Men featuring a pirate choir demanding one barrel of rum after another. The refrain invites to sing along and is one of the best on Rabengesänge. Immediately afterwards the song Rondeau (Mort) saddens my mind – Karsten alias Castus must bury his beloved.
This release contains bombastic music like a soundtrack and is a quite arduous piece because of its highly artful presentation. I did not listen to an entire a capella album up to now and I have to admit that this experience is in such a way intense that I nearly got crushed ;) Betimes Castus packs a proper portion of pathos and brummagem into his songs, in some cases he piles it on in my opinion.
This work has nothing to do with Metal at all, but exactly this fact allures. Every metal fan needs some breathers – and I do not want to hark back on corny Christmas songs…