Band:	Imperium Dekadenz
Album:	Procella Vadens
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	January 18, 2010
Guest review by:	Jericho Rehling

01. Die Hoffnung Stirbt...
02. Lacrimae Mundi
03. A Million Moons
04. Ego Universalis
05. À La Nuit Tombante
06. An Autumn Serenade
07. Ocean, Mountain's Mirror
08. The Descent Into Hades
09. Procella Vadens
10. ...Wenn Der Sturm Beginnt

"Follow me? into the night, walk the path of mystery?"

The gentle crashing of waves, subtle behind a sad piano, rolling through your speakers, carrying you away, far away, to a world where you can only see in black and white; and everything is beautiful and sad. You drift, and drift, and then the riffs begin, cold and sharp and raw, accompanied by high, mournful wails and interrupted by the occasional acoustic interlude. It is a somber journey, even melancholic, and it's a landscape frigid and harsh, but at the same time strangely beautiful.

Procella Vadens is the third full-length album by German duo Imperium Dekadenz, and you can tell exactly what you'll be hearing by looking at the album cover. Black metal, lots of atmosphere, dirty production and little experimentation.

To me, the most striking aspect of the music is the atmosphere. Acoustics and keyboards, most of which sound like a grand piano, even some operatic singing, break up the music and give the album a solemn, thoughtful air. Although, the meat of the album is more traditional black metal with fast, heavily distorted tremolos that sound cold as ice and make up most of the guitar work. The riffs are fairly simple, but produce melodies that are very easy to get lost in. The vocals are predominantly moderately high pitched, harsh, but intelligible wails without too much variety, though they fit with the other instrumentation perfectly and never get boring. Not much emphasis is placed on the drum work, but it is clearly audible and seems well performed and precise.

The keyboards/piano parts of the album and its guitar work very rarely overlap, which may seem odd for an atmospheric album. But the melodies of the riffs and Horaz's vocals build their own beauty; spinning off of the air created by the acoustics and keyboards and strengthening it without relying on a constant backdrop of synthesizers and choirs to maintain the ambience like many other albums.

Overall, Imperium Dekadenz has produced another very solid work, with a rich atmosphere that is difficult to grow bored of. However, there is nothing innovative here, and while the entire album is very strong, nothing is exceptional enough to place it at the level of other atmospheric masterpieces like Summoning's Oath Bound and Agalloch's The Mantle.