Eremit, Der – Fiebertraum

It doesn’t happen too often that music from Switzerland comes my way, the only other bands I can think of right now are The Young Gods, Panic on the Titanic and Sleepwalk. Der Eremit (German for ‘the hermit’) make truly original music. The band was founded in 1995 by Gian Albertin, in 1998 their first album saw the light, “Blend-Werk”. That album already was promising, on their latest cd they have improved further. The music is very eclectic, combining all sorts of styles and instruments. You can hear that the band has a metal background, but the guitars are not so dominant on most tracks. There are strong EBM influences, electronics play an important role. The texts are sung in German, reminding a bit of the ‘Deutsche Todeskunst’, but with more irony. Many of the songs have ‘difficult’ structures, they go from one way to another, which is sometimes a bit tiring. This is definitely not an easy cd to listen to, you have to hear it a few times to let it grow on you. “Fiebertraum” contains no less than 19 tracks. A nice thing is the use of classical instruments like violin, piano and cello. The songs range from quiet darkwave tracks to heavy electro beats to powerful crossover, but sometimes you can for instance suddenly hear some oriental sounds. That the band uses so many styles is original, but has as disadvantage that they don’t really have an own style. But that Der Eremit has potential is clear, they are full of ideas and have no fear to experiment.

artist: Eremit, Der
label: Giblaut records
details: