Album Review: Bergfried - Romantik III
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
There’s an extent to which I think that an album has to be judged by the capabilities of the musicians themselves. If some fifteen year old drops an amateurish one-boy deathcore project there’s only so harsh it would ever be reasonable to be. But if someone with enormous talent and experience to call upon does the same, then there’s a measure more that I feel one is entitled to stretch their critical faculties. And that’s where I am with Bergfried. This is a project that, very clearly, has an outrageous quantity of musical prowess. Simultaneously, I really disliked substantial blocks of it. I’ll apologise in advance for the hyperbole, but Bergfried put me through some shit, and if the following flood of pretentious, overwritten verbosity is the only route through which a thimble of catharsis may be granted me, then so be it.
The biggest problem here is the wild sine wave of the album’s quality song-by-song. The opening track for example is promising: synth heavy, radio friendly, but with an undeniable heavy metal groove, the type of plectrum-melting solo that any red-blooded man amongst us would kill to have written, and a bravura vocal performance from howler-par-excellence Anna de Savoy. But here we see the dichotomy: Anna isn’t the only vocalist on here. Another makes their presence felt on the following song “Fallen From Grace” and...oof. Allowing this man to sing on your album is the single most egregious act of self sabotage since Ben Shapiro publicly stated that his wife says vaginas aren’t meant to get wet. He sounds like Bon Jovi with a sinus infection and has this unmanageable vibrato that strongly suggests that at least one nipple is wired to a car battery and someone is cranking the shit out of the ignition. Maybe this is just a case of individual taste, the AOR stylings that inform much of the album (according to the promo sheet) are not ones I typically find myself enamoured with, but even so, I cannot stand this man’s singing voice. He pops up everywhere on this thing, and depending upon what mood I’m in at the time it’s either annoyingly grating or outright agonising to sit through.
The thing is, Romantik III’s best moments can be fun, but it’s worst are borderline unlistenable. It’s influences are broad but not altogether in a way that helps it - “Serenades” is this evil crossbreeding of Blink-182 mallrat pop-punk and Queen's ostentatious theatricality as though it’s trying to force this operatic melodrama into teenage hormone rage about acne outbreaks and Smegma buildup. These styles feel totally incongruous both together and in the context of the album as a whole – which isn’t helped when the song decides to turn into Dragonforce for the solo. Each individual part feels awkwardly segregated and they transition into each other with the grace of me falling downstairs in shopping trolley full of fireworks. It’s unbearable. “Star Crossed Love” is a ballad between two people with the personal chemistry of mannequins, and it actively took my ability to form connections with other people out behind a shed and shot it. Listen to the spoken word exchange on
“Fallen From Grace”:
“So c’mon, let’s go”
“Why?”
“What why? We need to leave! Now!”
“Yeah whatever”.
I mean... It’s not exactly the most riveting interplay you’re ever likely to encounter is it?
It’s fucking infuriating because there’s some great shit here that hints at supreme talent. The lead work for one is epochal in it’s excellence, clean, tasteful and nuanced in composition, technical yet wonderfully tuneful (“Tears of a Thousand Years” has an absolutely wonderful solo, one example out of many other equally fantastic demonstrations of guitar mastery over the course of the full record). When the album can duck under its own bullshit it unleashes a splendid banquet of heavy metal that in sections treads towards the fantastical evocations of power metal. Herein lie the resources to produce a simply sublime metal or hard rock album suffocating under misfiring compositional quirks or performance faults that waste no opportunity in stalling it short of its potential glory. There is an EP in here that would have me salivating; “Dark Wings” “Queen of the Dead” “Gates of Fate” and “Back for More” are powerful and vivacious, full of mighty riffs and unbreakable hooks. Listened to in isolation I begin fooling myself that I like this album much more than I actually do. But stuck alongside other underwhelming work that populates the rest of Romantik III they’re almost painful in how clearly they illustrate the greatness that Bergfried could have bestowed upon us.
It’s a million times easier to pen apoplectic bloviations than it is to actually create something. Underlying every dart i’ve chucked spitefully at Bergfried is the knowledge that I’m nowhere close to their equal as musicians. But I don’t have to be in order to understand why I don’t like something. Hopefully it’s clear that I’m being rather exaggerated for what I sincerely pray is coming across as being remotely amusing, but the core complaints I’m raising are dead serious. Songs on here are marathons apart in terms of how much I enjoyed them, it’s eclecticism is sometimes damaging, and specific performances are severely irritating. It’s frustrating and inconsistent, yet holds a kernel of excellence that provides the smoking gun i need to be able to say that Bergfried could drop something genuinely magnificent in years to come. Sadly, though, Romantik III is not that something.
