Love Is Colder Than Death - L’oscura estasi

Love Is Colder Than Death is the project of a trio made up of German multi-instrumentalists Maik Hartung and Sven Mertens and singer Susann Heinrich. Their music combines rarefied electronics with ethereal atmospheres in the vein of Dead Can Dance, over which blows an icy wind of clear dark-rock provenance.

After debuting with the EP Wild World (1991), the band rose to prominence with the album Teignmouth (1991). A record with predominantly ecstatic atmospheres, close to certain new age sounds and to the most celestial scores of Dead Can Dance, but one that also holds a series of surprising musical variations, moving from medieval ballads to obsessive rhythms, from Gregorian chant to dance pulses, from cathedrals of sound dominated by a Bach-style organ to "cosmic" settings.

This gives rise to fascinating tracks such as “Tired To Death”, “Very Ill” and “Structure”, a perfect synthesis of classicizing sweetness and electronic emphasis; while the church organ of “Questo Mostrarsi” heightens the mystical tones. The almost “industrial” beats of tracks like “Sex And Horror” and “Wild World”, finally, echo the danse macabre of Sisters of Mercy and Killing Joke. Susann Heinrich's celestial voice helps lend the record its solemnity.

The follow-up Mental Traveller (1992) fails to repeat that success, but attempts to update the sound of Love Is Colder Than Death in an ethnic direction, drawing above all on Celtic folk (“Fiorina”, “Eclogue The Third”). The downward arc continues with Oxeia (1994), a pale imitation of the dream-pop of Cocteau Twins, while the following EP Spellbound almost seems to be the band's swan song.

Five years later, however, Maik Hartung and Sven Mertens reunite and bring in new singer Manuela to create Atopos (1999). An album that heightens the gothic tones of their sound, drawing even more markedly on the ancestral atmospheres of Dead Can Dance's “Spiritchaser” and relying on largely acoustic instrumentation, with exotic instruments, especially Middle Eastern ones. “I believe acoustic instruments are more dynamic and give the music more vitality,” explains Maik Hartung. “Susann, on the other hand, represented the more electronic side of the group, and she preferred to leave the band.” The mystical electronics of their early days thus gives way to a sophisticated form of dark-rock with ethnic and archaic roots, not too far removed from the Teutonic strain of Aurora.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google