KADAVAR: For The Dead Travel Fast (ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

If it's tempting to see in him just another offspring of seventies hard rock, content to make something new out of something old, Kadavar deserves better than this unjust shortcut because, behind the raw sound and the frenzied energy released by devastating riffs, hide some artists who clearly have a vision of their art that, contrary to appearances, deceptive as often, is not static.

Thus, each album develops its own universe, its own aesthetic. "Berlin" was intended to be more sensual, "Rough Times" more macabre. Its dressing where the three musicians stand out from a Transylvanian decor brings "For The Dead Travel Fast" closer to the first Black Sabbath. His analogical sound recording, warmer than his predecessor's, is also part of this more assertive anchoring in the proto doom of the 70s, whose phantasmagorical aura he revives. If this horrific imagery inherited from Victorian literature and 60's cinema is not new in hard rock and its cousins (the stoner, etc.), at least it blends wonderfully into the music Kadavar forges with a force that is both brutal and mellow at the same time.

This borrowing from the Gothic horror commands for the Germans a return to both heavy rock under Sabbathian tutelage and ebony black psychedelia, in the manner of their first and cult offering. This is probably the reason why it's so easy to enter this fourth record which sees its progenitors getting back to these anthology compositions they had the secret and which had been somewhat diluted on the two following records, despite their precious success. 'The Devil's Master' and 'Evil Forces' have something of satanic orgies, viciously creeping for the first one, more nervous for the second one. Coupled with a 'Children Of The Night' almost escaped from 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' for this alloy between doom and progressive, these projections immediately set "For The Dead Travel Fast" on the right track, that of the eponymous opus.

Does this mean that Kadavar repeats itself and just looks in the rear-view mirror? Nay. The tender 'Dancing With The Dead', with its morbid romanticism and flamboyant performance by Lindemann, the very sixties 'Poison', with its powerfully dramatic vocals, or 'Demons In My Mind', both spatial and abrupt, not to mention this 'Saturnales', pure and bucolic but full of sadness, show that the band is progressing, continually enriching its palette. Finally, this fourth effort marks the return to a sometimes more generous format. Half of the menu exceeds the five-minute, with 'Long Forgotten Song' not hesitating to go even further for a leaden and psychedelic result all together.

As usual, Kadavar gives the impression of not inventing anything, and yet as always the charm is there, delivering with 'For The Dead Travel Fast' a work both close to his first album and yet with a colour of its own, the receptacle of an occult and evolving proto doom. - Official website

KADAVAR

FOR THE DEAD TRAVEL FAST

NUCLEAR BLAST

ROCK