Yelworc – The Ghosts I Called (Album – Metropolis Records)
Genre/Influences: Dark-Electro, Cinematic-EBM.
Format: Digital, CD.
Background/Info: Yelworc don’t need any further introduction to EBM & Dark-Electro lovers. The band became one of the leading 90s formations and their debut album “Brainstorming” (1992) belongs to our collective memory. After the split of the duo Peter Devin moved on releasing new albums “Trinity” (2004) and “Icolation” (2007). So this is the first new album in years which is however bringing songs together that have been written since 2013.
Content: The work features 15 songs bringing us back to the initial darkness of Yelworc-productions. It’s a kind of haunting EBM style and the mainly instrumental format ‘featured at most of the songs, give it all a kind of Cinematic style. There’re a very few vocal parts featured but rather as an extra ghost-like effect instead of real vocals you can sing along.
+ + + : Yelworc is back and that got me enthusiastic. The haunting atmosphere is still there, the composition remaining one of the darkest and most tormented ones in its genre. The Cinematic style is interesting and would definitely fit to a greater artistic creation featuring images or any kind of freaky performance.
– – – : Yelworc is back but this album sounds like a shadow from what the band initially was. Since Dominik Van Reich left the band it all feels a bit like Peter Devin is missing a part of the original magic. This work will not enter into history!
Conclusion: I expected a more successful come-back of this project which got his major success during the 90s… quite a time ago now!
Best songs: “Can’t See You…?”, “Crucified With Revolution”, “Erased Name – Blind Life”, “Mutated Tongues”.
Rate: 7.
Artist: www.facebook.com/yelworC.official
Label: www.metropolis-records.com / www.facebook.com/MetropolisRecords
Listen to “The Ghosts I Called”:
About yelworC
Peter Devin and Oliver Buttner (also known as Dominik van Reich) founded the German electro-industrial band yelworC in 1987. The band’s name is a reference to Aleister Crowley, and their music explores dark magic, religious ceremonies, mortality and aggression.
Between 1988 and 1990, the duo produced several demo tapes before Celtic Circle Productions (C.C.P.), a now-defunct label, signed them. In December 1992 they released the debut CD album “Brainstorming”, followed by the “Blood in Face” EP of remixes and new material.
In 1994 yelworC unexpectedly disbanded. Van Reich formed amGod, an experimental project, and released “Half Rotten and Decayed” with C.C.P., while Devin retained the rights to the yelworC name. Devin returned in 2004 with the studio album “Trinity”, featuring late-1990s compositions built around Dante’s Inferno, with a guest appearance by Dennis Ostermann of In Strict Confidence on “Vexilla Regis Inferni”. The 2007 album “Icolation” extended the “Trinity” concept with themes from Dante’s Purgatorio.
yelworC returned with “The Ghosts I Called” via Metropolis Records in January 2024, a fifteen-track album gathering material Devin had written since 2013. It followed a set of four vinyl reissues on GH Records revisiting the group’s earliest releases: “Dis-Cover and Con-Trol”, “Brainstorming”, “Flash, Wards, and Incubation” and “A.I.W.A.S.S.”.
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