Noekk - The Grimalkin

*=Staff's pick	The Albatross* The Grimalkin Codex Deserta

Genre	Dark Ambient	Funghus Baldachin	Vocals
Tracks	3	Funghus Baldachin	Guitar
Runningtime	42 Min.	F.F. Yugoth	Guitar
Label	Prophecy Productions	F.F. Yugoth	Bass
Release	19 May 2006	F.F. Yugoth	Drums
Country	Germany	Funghus Baldachin	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

Noekk from Germany is a duo consisting of the members Funghus Baldachin and F.F Yugoth, guys with merits from the bands Empyrium and Sun Of The Sleep. Their music can be described as experimental or dark ambient if you like. The Grimalkin is their second album and it is filled with mysticism and atmospheric moods that can easily take sudden and unexpected turns. The music is moody and includes long musical fieldtrips combined with seventies spaced-out progressive rock and with a theatrical touch, to put it in short.

The first song The Albatross feels like a long wait for something to happen, it has a good groove backed with organ but it is building up for something that never happens. When you get a good flow, it halts and is changed by passages with sacral vocals and a dark and gloomy feeling that brings the song down. The Grimalkin, the title track, starts slowly with a beautiful piano part, but beauty is turned to ugliness as the song becomes introvert and I am loosing my interest. Although there are parts that save the songs like when they get a Dio moment going for a short while in the middle of the song and further by some really nice progressive parts with keyboard. But just like with the first song there is a lot of potential but the lack of speed, sincemid-tempo is somewhat as fast as it goes, makes this too heavy and gloomy for me. Codex Deserta, the twenty-minute track, is more to my liking with more substance, more speed, and it has a heavier beat instead of a more heavy depressing feeling.

But even if I might have been sounding a bit negative so far, I must give Noekk credits for their ability to create moods and atmospheres within the compositions. Further, I really like many of the long instrumental parts, and with only three songs on the album and a total of forty minutes of playtime there is plenty of room for that. And it is with those musical fieldtrips where it is at its best and Noekk get a flow going with their music even though it never seems to loosen up and it always turns in a different direction then where I would like it to go. The music is building up so that it could "explode" but instead of fireworks it is back to the slow and gloomy parts again, not necessarily bad but not perhaps my choice of direction. And that is the main problem for me with The Grimalkin, the flow is too seldom to find in the music as it comes with to many stops with sudden change of directions making it getting a too pretentious and introverted approach.

I find it hard to compare this band to anything that I know and is familiar with, but bands like Pink Floyd, Opeth and King Crimson does not seem to be to far fetched. One can not complain on the complexity and it is actually a fascinating album and you find lots of nice passages as well as twists and turns in the music, but there is so many things that with a little change could have made this much better, according to me.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
6	4	6

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - Thomas