In Extremo - Loreley

Dear readers,

This review honours my favourite German band In Extremo that mixes medieval instruments such as bagpipes, dulcimers, harps, hurdy-gurdies, lutes, shawms and many more with poetic lyrics in German, Latin, Hebrew, Swedish, Icelandic, French and Spanish among others and modern rock music with bass, guitar and drums. The band celebrated its twentieth year of existence in 2015 and released a new song entitled ''Loreley''. I hope you enjoy my review, the song and the video.

Have a nice weekend,

Sebastian Kluth

It's time to celebrate! In Extremo started as a purely medieval and acoustic band twenty years ago that toured numerous castles in Europe. Another project around the same time focused on rock music with a punk touch inspired by the revolutionary underground bands during the last years of the German Democratic Republic. A few years later, band leader Das letzte Einhorn decided to combine both projects. ''Weckt die Toten!'' was a genre-breaking effort that combined medieval instruments such as bagpipes, citterns, harps, hurdy-gurdies and shawms with hard rock and heavy metal sounds while lyrics where sung both in German and in historical languages such as Latin. In the beginning, medieval purists despised this new style while modern rock fans couldn't care less about old-fashioned poetry and dated instruments but the band believed in its potential and carried on with a lot of passion and perseverance. Only one a few years later, the acoustic version of their adaption of the old Swedish ballad ''Herr Mannelig'' was part of the now-legendary role-playing game Gothic. The video clip for their single ''Vollmond'' was played on television. The single ''Kuss mich'' became a surprising success and made it on several popular compilation albums. The band participated at the Bundesvision Song Contest were they finished third with their Gaelic anthem ''Liam''. Despite the fact that mainstream media mostly continued to ignore the band, In Extremo kickstarted a new genre, gathered fans all around the world, made two records that went straight to the pole position of the German Media Control Charts, had three gold-certificated outputs so far and sold over one and a half million albums with their unusual and unique style. 

This year, In Extremo celebrated its rise to success with its faithful fans during a weekend-long festival next to the famous Lorelei rock on the Rhine. An amazing documentary called ''Verehrt und angespien - 20 Jahre In Extremo'' portrays the band's long way to the top. A package of the festival recordings will probably see the light of day in the near future as well. In order to celebrate this event in front of thousands of fans in style, the band put out this new digital single which is also included in the highly recommendable box set ''20 wahre Jahre'' that includes remastered versions of all previous records plus an unreleased acoustic album and an album with rarities.

''Loreley'' represents everything In Extremo stands for and if you have never heard of this band before, you can start right here and right now. The track opens with epic and slightly elegiac bagpipe sounds before a powerful rhythm section and gripping riffs kick in. The bagpipe sound gets more joyful as shawms and other instruments add to the festive atmosphere of this new band anthem. The lyrics are straight, simple and authentic which exactly represents the joie de vivre of this group. The charming vocals are sometimes raw, slightly epic and somewhat self-humourous. The chorus is uplifting, powerful and catchy which makes it a perfect single and live anthem. This ode to the band and their fans has a vivid mid-tempo pace but also gives the medieval instruments some time to shine in the calmer middle section. In about four minutes, there are no unnecessary lengths and the track is to the point. The only negative aspects that could be mentioned is first of all that the track is somehow predictable since it recalls similar lyrical topics from the fan anthem ''Nur ihr allein'' and the previous band hymn ''Sieben Koche''. Musically, this isn't the band's most original hour either but that's not what it was supposed to be anyway. 

''Loreley'' is an emotional party anthem for medieval rock fans and simply one hundred percent In Extremo. Make sure to listen to this at full volume and to sing along to this to fully enjoy this great gift to the fans and the band itself. Here's to the next twenty years of Germany's most fascinating rock band.

Final rating: 8/10