Scribed by Sandre the Giant
Germany’s Atrocity are a bit of a chameleonic beast. I first discovered them thanks to a free mp3 download of ‘Gods of Nations’ on a website somewhere about twenty years ago (yes, websites used to do that and I discovered many bands through such things. Relapse was great for it and so were Century Media). I thought it was Century Media, but apparently it was Napalm Records that released this so maybe it was a magazine CD… Anyway, a free mp3 gave me my first taste of German death metal/gothic metal and it really pulled me in. Then there was ‘Cold Black Days’ and that was me gone. We’ve said it before about the AS; some records are here purely for my childhood nostalgia and this is a definite contender.
‘Reich of Phenomena’ is a really punishing start to the record, channeling the band’s death metal roots but putting a definite dose of gothic atmosphere into it. When you know that Atrocity’s lineup also doubles as the lineup for Leaves Eyes, German gothic metal stalwarts, that makes a lot of sense. There is a lot of gothic atmosphere permeating throughout ‘Atlantis’, something that we hadn’t heard in death metal since the earliest days of Paradise Lost and even some of Tiamet’s transitionary work. It is a sound that you didn’t see a huge amount of in the early 2000s, which gave them an opportunity with the likes of the goth pop metal ‘Cold Black Days’, which is just insanely catchy. Everything about ‘Atlantis’ was a draw to 18 year old me, the mixing of styles between earworm goth metal tunes and chugging brutality (‘Atlantean Empire’), the mythical themes and the grandiosity of it all. I was hooked and much, much later in life I have come to appreciate much more elements in it than I had even noticed at the beginning. The swooning orchestral moments of ‘Clash of the Titans’, the bulldozing start of ‘Apocalypse’ that reminds me of Vader, it all works to make ‘Atlantis’ an intriguingly unique proposition after all this time.
I had never experienced anything like Atrocity when I first heard this record. I was drawn in by ‘Cold Black Days’ and ‘Gods of Nations’, two songs that I would say are now further down the list of favourite tracks on this record. It is always the first bands and records that you like when discovering new genres and music as a youngling that stick with you, and while ‘Atlantis’ would probably never be counted as an all time classic, it has stuck with me for 20 years and is somehting I still listen to for that warm nostalgic feeling for my late teens. But it is also a bit of a hidden gem, lurking in the European underground from the early 00s that sounds a lot bigger than its peers. Seek it out for a treat.
https://www.facebook.com/AtrocityOfficial
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