Restlessness belongs to the basic configuration every artist comes with. Martin Schindler, it seems again and again, has been granted an uncommonly big portion of it. With his project MANTUS, he is solely succumbing to the beating of his heart and the call of night for more than 20 years now. On countless studio albums and EPs, he is giving expression to his burning soul. Year after year, he returns to the scene, trying once and for all to tame his demons and to banish his weltschmerz by means of his powerfully elegiac music. And yet, every time they come back, stronger than ever. This made Martin Schindler do something highly unusual – which is rather fitting given the fact that also MANTUS is an unusual icon even within the Gothic scene. With “Katharsis” and “Pagan Folk Songs”, Schindler releases two stand-alone, equitable and each for itself uniquely captivating MANTUS records on one double album, thus ultimately underlining his devotion for dark music.
“Katharsis” is a MANTUS record that couldn’t be more archetypical. And even though everybody familiar with that Janus headed project knows that this in itself can mean a lot of things, it must be said: It has been long years since MANTUS last sounded that iconic and fresh at the same time. “Katharsis” is gathering all the trademarks that made MANTUS become one of the fixed stars of dark music in the first place. Melancholia and sombre energy, pushing beats and opulent melodies, heavy guitars and throbbing sequences, all overshadowed by Martin Schindler’s haunting vocals. “Katharsis” is the cumulation of intensity, and it is songs like “Chaos” or “Neue Führer” that showcase Schindler’s impressive talent. “Katharsis” is his reckoning with society and with himself – an ultimately cathartic process that will change artist and listener.
Unique, surprising and totally baffling is what Martin Schindler is offering on “Pagan Folk Songs”. Just like “Katharsis”, it is an album carrying that well-know melancholy, that hopelessly bitter-sweet aura in its DNA. And yet it is heading for an altogether different musical path. True to its title, Schindler is acting out a long cherished and finally exorcised passion and is embracing a selection of touching, archaic, powerful and utterly spiritual folk songs. In the tradition of bands like OMNIA, FAUN or WARDRUNA, Schindler is gazing into his very depths and is excavating his roots in an unparalleled and unheard-of way. This is not simply a MANTUS album with acoustic instruments. It is an altogether new facet to the work of an artist born again. Still, a MANTUS fan will recognize the aura of this project even on “Pagan Folk Songs”. The artistic expression, the shamanistic, hypnotic thrall of these songs, however, carry a sacral, bewitching momentum one might associate with SOPOR AETERNUS. Maybe Goth traditionalists are the better Pagan Folk artists after all...
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