Review: Winselmutter – Ketzergeyst

Winselmutter are one of those bands that are hard to pin down: too emotional to be “trve” and too self-aware to disappear into retro worship, yet checking all the boxes. At four tracks and barely scraping past twenty minutes, “Ketzergeyst” offers four new songs of raw black metal straight from the rehearsal basement. The production is raw without collapsing into the fashionable thin sound aesthetic that still infects too much underground black metal. The whole thing feels befittingly damp and nocturnal.

What’s striking is how completely Winselmutter embrace black metal orthodoxy without sounding trapped by it, with songs like “Cold Winds ov Eternal Solitude” and “Bloodmoon Witchery” almost comically committed to second-wave aesthetics on paper, yet once the music actually starts, the sincerity behind it dissolves any temptation to laugh. This isn’t parody or postmodern reconstruction. It’s black metal played by people who still appear to believe in black metal.

The opener, “Cold Winds ov Eternal Solitude,” surges forward with enough violent momentum to suggest black/thrash before collapsing into bleak melodic passages that recall early Bethlehem. The transitions are rough and occasionally abrupt, but importantly, they feel honest. “Bloodmoon Witchery” is probably the strongest song here, mostly because it understands something many modern black metal bands have forgotten: repetition only works if the riff deserves repetition. Winselmutter lock into a hypnotic cycle halfway through the song and simply refuse to release tension, allowing the drums to stagger underneath while the vocals detach further and further from the structure.

There’s also a welcome absence of irony throughout the entire release. No dungeon synth interludes inserted for algorithmic appeal. No faux-medieval cosplay aesthetics designed for merch tables and social media thumbnails. Winselmutter use familiar tools, especially tremolo riffs and shkrieking vocal performances and rely entirely on conviction to carry them. Most importantly, it actually works.“Sword ov Spoil” closes the EP on a weaker note, leaning too heavily on atmosphere after the preceding songs already exhausted much of the emotional terrain. Some songwriting ideas feel one rehearsal away from fully crystallizing into something exceptional.

Too much contemporary black metal feels museum-preserved: technically correct, emotionally dead, terrified of sounding imperfect. “Ketzergeyst” still breathes. It still sounds dangerous in places. More importantly, it sounds genuine — a quality becoming increasingly rare in a genre drowning in self-awareness and aesthetic recycling. Winselmutter aren’t reinventing black metal here. They’re simply reminding listeners why this sound mattered in the first place.