Album Review: Rană – “Richtfeuer” (Black Metal/Post-Metal/Crust Punk)

Written by Westin

I first became aware of Rană after their inclusion on the Black Metal Rainbows compilation last year. That track was one of literally over a hundred, so unfortunately it got lost in the shuffle, but I remembered the name. Any band featuring on that comp promised to be both politically respectable and capable of some fantastic music, so I was very pleasantly surprised to get an email with their brand new album back in April. The band describes themselves as “Antifascist Black Metal” with a capital ABM, and they deliver on the music as much as their politics.

As is traditional in black metal fashion, Rană are something of an enigma. The members hail from across Germany, but beyond that there’s little information to be had on this semi-anonymous project. The membership is simply identified as Julian, Basti, Toby, Eric, and Andy, and I have zero idea when this project came into existence. Guitarist Julian Sprenger is the only member who can be readily identified, having released an EP with the band Opium Divan back in 2013. As for Rană, they released the very short debut album Armament in 2021 (some might call it an EP), bringing us to this new LP Richtfeuer.

Mystery is something of an interesting concept that Rană is playing around with. Richtfeuer can be translated to ‘leading lights’, lights used to signal to incoming ships a safe passage through shallow and potentially dangerous waters, but it can also be translated to ‘beacon’. A far off spot of light, a beacon in the distance, is a contrasting symbol, representing hope but equally capable of the mystery of unknown design glimpsed briefly in the shroud of fog or between the tangled fingers of branches, beckoning. Both draw on imagery of lighthouses, with their dichotomous representation of salvation and the void of unknowable isolation.

Consider the context through which I found the band – the track included on that compilation was “Our Smouldering Grief”, the first half of a two part song that closes this new album, at the time not even fully announced. This was a window into the future, but traveling backwards. The “leading light” guiding me to the band was in fact the closing track, in a sense beginning with an ending, but an incomplete one at that, devoid of context or even knowledge that there was something beyond. The cover art continues this artistic exploration of mystery – a hunted boar, riddled with arrows; but is it being hunted for sport, for food, is it a monster haunting us in the dark we’ve finally vanquished, or are we the boar, driven relentlessly onward by the ever present threat of death? Is that its soul leaving the body, or something more ephemeral trying to escape the confines of a mortal shell to linger like whispers in our nightmares? Rană eschewed a logo on this release, further concealing the identity and purpose so as to emphasize the nature of the unknowable.

Richtfeuer opens on “Läutern”, a false lull of haunting acoustic guitar that immediately shatters beneath the weight of Basti’s shrieks and the rest of the band. The song is a swirling morass of tempo and style shifts, heavy trudging chords give way to staccato crust speeds, then a full blackened metal assault rips you to pieces before settling back into an achingly gorgeous post-metal section. Eric‘s drumming is routinely frantic, then subdued, and can shift deftly and sharply throughout the spectrum. The ambition of the bands exploration of genre is on full display through the eleven-minute introduction, a death knell to rulers and borders, both material and metaphysical, “Shaking off the malice that resides in every crown / no longer servant under patrician reign”. The band perfectly flow between styles, never settling anywhere before they take off again in a new direction, but it always feels organic and intentioned, following the trail the music has laid out before them, uncertain of where it is leading but knowing a destination is ahead.

“Flamura” is the shortest on the record, benefitting from a fairly straight forward black metal focus that is never in danger of growing stale, though it is definitely the simplest song here. The title track opens with very audible bass from Tobi, which highlights his playing, and clean singing, though I’m uncertain if it’s Basti or Andi trading off with whomever is the harsh vox. That dichotomy works wonderfully, and mysteriously, as the echoed and nearly choral quality of the singing creates an incredible sense of space and atmosphere, lending an edge of the grandiose to the piece that never risks overwhelming the careful emotional narrative being constructed in the shadows of the album.

One of the issues these multi-genre spanning bands can face is that often there is an imbalance in how those genres are infused into the musical structure, with one regularly taking the back seat or not even really feeling present beyond a surface level throwaway here or there. But if we return to the beginning of the end, “Our Smouldering Grief / Im Brand”, we can hear the full encapsulation of the promise the band makes, the post-metal, black metal, and crust all thrive and build off each other in ways that move beyond simple genre boundaries, full of bright tremolo guitars and blast beats that dance with each other and the beauty of the extreme in the music.

The band speaks on the title of the track, wishing to “lead us into the burning down of this world with the hope of building a better one.” It is impossible to ignore the intentional symbolic framing the band chooses to employ here – a light in darkness, and the fires of death. The western coast of North America is on fire, as is much of Canada, and it recently came to a very visible head as the smoke and ash from this leaked onto the US East Coast, coating New York in a haze of orange. The unceasing machine of capital is literally grinding this world into nothing, and we are reaping the seed of death that was planted so long ago by generations before us, and Rană wants to guide us through this harrowing vision turned material reality. There are no heroes, only hopeful people, and an apocalypse is the perfect moment within which to start again and construct a better future. I am reminded of the quote from Italian communist and philosopher Antonio Gramsci, murdered in prison by the Mussolini regime prior to World War II: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

Rană transcend simple genre convention and reach for something greater, achieving an artistic high that must be experienced. Richtfeuer shows an incredible depth to the well-worn paths of black metal, and is a visceral testament to the continuing strength of the metal underground.