Reviews:

From Compulsion: (by Tony Dickie)

 There's no stopping Maniac at the moment. With Skiltliv he has released the album Skandinavisk Misantropi late last year, and Det Skjedde Noe Når Du Var I Belgia with Andrew Liles and Czral. Wüste is by far the most surprising, I've heard from the former Mayhem vocalist. Sehnsucht is regarded as his noise/darkwave/ambient project but it goes far beyond that description. Alongside Maniac, Sehnuscht comprise Vivian Slaughter (Gallhammer), the Icelandic Skitliv guitarist Ingvar Magnusson and sound composer Andrew Liles. Sehnsucht is an altogether different beast for Maniac.

  The hollow ringing atmospherics of 'Sult' cuts to a barrage of metal guitar riffing with Maniac's guttural roar, the entire thing is then looped and riddled with effects, blasts of explosive noise and added frequency damage. It sounds like a monstrous experimental improvisation. With a caterwauling vocal it's also one of a few tracks that betray Maniac's past in black metal music. As for much of Wüste, Maniac relies on a spoken word approach of sorts, and with Andrew Liles on production they're shredded and shadowed only allowing his unadorned vocal to slip through for brief moments.

  On the charmingly titled 'Cunt Queen' his pensive drawl menaces over rattling percussion, and quietly layered buzz guitars drenched in effects. 'Tarn of Guilt' is awash with backwards processing and heavily effected vocals, treated into squeaky and squawking processed hellish voices. It's a funhouse of effects and treatments latterly picking up on some simple piano keys and plain acoustic strum. 'Stadt Der Engel Der Vernichtung' features a split-channel delivery of out-of-time vocals over feint acoustic guitars. Everything is steeped in rubbery treatments, squeaks and creaks, snaps and crackles ensuring Wüste is enveloped in a surreal madness more typical of Nurse With Wound.

  Even where Maniac isn't centre stage things don't settle into anything too normal. The title track is rendered in Japanese by Vivian Slaughter, her spoken voice ever so slightly processed over squawking sax-blurt and lumbering lowend bass notes. The female voices and background hammering of 'Tokyo Daymare' slides into electrobeats with rhythms in disarray, sprinkled with a collage of TV samples.

  Wüste contains a couple of cover versions. And it's telling that by far the strangest is his choice of a Dwight Yoakam cover. With heavy reverbed chords augmenting the acoustic guitars 'South of Cincinnati' is given a touch of bluesy Americana with Maniac laying down a gravel coated drawl in the vein of Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan or Bain Wolfkind.

  Sehnsucht's take on Current 93's 'Good Morning Great Moloch' flits between an almost nursery rhyme delivery and whispered and growled spoken voice, the melody carried on fuzz guitars. Imagine Current 93's Swastikas For Noddy redrawn as stripped back black metal and you might get an idea of how this piece of creepy folk music sounds.

  The pivotal track on Wüste is 'Hanging In English Garden' where over tumbling electric guitar notes, Maniac, shadowed by the breathless whisperings of his fiancée, lets loose with a string of expletives as he passes comment on life, consumerism and capitalism. Snide comments on black metal and questions of worthiness and life are raised. As it progresses you can pick up on Current 93's 'This Carnival Is Dead And Gone' as it quietly strains from one channel.

  Wüste is a strange beast of a record that marries elements of metal with industrial and noise. I guess Wüste is disparate and diverse but at its best it successfully captures the atmosphere of Current 93, with the eccentricities of Nurse With Wound, while carrying over something of a metal edge. Who knows whether the breadth of ideas is down to Maniac or to Andrew Liles fried production but this is definitely the best I've heard from Maniac.

From Terrorizer: (by Will Stone)

 The word Sehnsucht in German means a longing or yearning, but to its founder Maniac, ex of Mayhem it means a lot more. "Sehnsucht is diseased mornings. Locusts," he says. "Sehnsucht is white darkness. Sehnsucht is the eternal now that can never be. The shining of shrines. Babies falling. Unforgiven. Desire. Making deals to suffer in longing. Sehnsucht is a point to zero.

  "Sehnsucht are spared from ignorance. We are music."

  There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth, a black metal schizo gone even more schizo. Sehnsucht also features the commendable ambient talents of fellow members Andrew Liles alongside Gallhammer bassist and Maniac's fiancée Vivian Slaughter and Skitliv guitarist Ingvar Magnusson. If that isn't enough to make up your minds then the English Dictionary needs a larger vocabulary.

From Vital: (by NM)

 Sehnsucht is the Norwegian artist called Maniac. Apart from Sehnsucht, Maniac is also the brain behind one of Norway's most successful black metal-bands Mayhem. Before Sehnsucht, Maniac established the project Skitliv, that was combining elements of black metal with electronic elements of the harsher kinds. Sehnsucht use the same approach of combining metal elements with mistreated electronic equipment, though in comparison to Skitliv, this project is more subdued and introvert. Compositionally the album first of all belongs to the industrial, with ambient elements of the darker and more evil kinds. Metal-based guitarriffs and industrial, even harsh noise elements penetrates the music. Another remarkable thing is the vocals of Maniac himself, changing between black metal-screams and spoken voices. Also voice samples of women and screaming horn instruments momentarily intervenes the structures. Interesting new effort from Maniac, that takes a further step away from his early roots in the extreme metal-scene.

From Chain D.L.K.: (by Maurizio Pustianaz)

 Sehnsucht is the new project by Mayhem front man Maniac who, aside from his power noise metal outfit Skitliv, asked to Andrew Liles (Nurse With Wound), Ingvar Magnusson (Skitlivs’ guitarist), and his girlfriend Vivian Slaughter (who’s also vocalist/bass player into the Japanese all girl band Gallhammer) to join him for a new adventure. The new band sounds really different from all his others and this time we have a ten tracks album that spans from free jazz spoken word with a noise doom background (check the title track for this) to rock neo-folk (like "South of Cincinnati"), passing through experimental electronic noise with metal guitar riffs (see the opening "Sult") or industrial blues (try to imagine a blues song filtered through Nurse With Wound, Einsturzende Neubauten and a bit of Whitehouse and you’ll have "Good morning great Moloch"). For something totally different that sounds like Godzilla playing with a Nintendo game, check "Tokio daymare", which mix Japanese day-life city recordings to electronic rhythms/improvisations. Another example of good industrial spoken word influenced by rock guitarism is "Hanging in English garden" which mix noise, clean guitar with reverb and spoken word just to meet a filtered Current 93 song toward the end. The album closes with "Ten", a five minutes mayhem of throbbing sounds, electronic noises and spoken word. WUSTE to me sounds definitively more inspired than the Skitliv release on Cold Spring and for this reason I suggest you to check it.

From Mentenebre: (by Fernando O. Paíno)

  He aquí un proyecto gestado en Inglaterra que ha elegido como nombre la misma palabra que los alemanes Rammsteinescogieron para titular uno de sus discos más elogiados, Sehnsucht, un término que en la lengua germana refiere al deseo, el anhelo o la nostalgia.

  Sehnsucht es un proyecto muy peculiar dirigido por Maniac, el vocalista de los prestigiosos pioneros del género Black metal, Mayhem. En este nuevo proyecto, Maniac se va a rodear de grandes personalidades del mundillo experimental, como es el caso de Andrew Liles, un inglés un tanto lampiño que ha realizado unos trabajos en solitario impresionantes; éstos llamaron la atención de bandas como Current 93 o Nurse With Wound, que no dudaron ni un segundo en incluirle dentro de sus filas como miembro permanente.

  En “Wüste” se conserva la agresividad blackmetalera que corre innata por las venas de Maniac; sin embargo, y tal y como pasaba con Skiltiv, otro proyecto capitaneado por Maniac, el sonido metal va a ser ahogado a base de pinceladas experimentales que van a convertir al trabajo en algo totalmente único y singular. Podríamos definirlo más que como Black metal experimental, (definición idónea para hablar de Skiltiv) como experimental con tintes Black metal. Y es que en “Wüste” la dosis de experimental es mucho mayor que la aportada por las guitarras y las ya conocidas entonaciones vocales de Maniac.

  Dentro de este CD nos vamos a encontrar guiños a bandas como Current 93, como es el caso del sexto corte, una versión un tanto peculiar del ‘Good Morning Great Moloch’, tema que Tibet suele incluir en la mayoría de su repertorio en directo. Sehnsucht impregna en el unos matices desconcertantes y extravagantes que lo convierten en algo raspante, agresivo, áspero y viciado.

  Este disco es muy recomendable para los seguidores de la tendencia experimental, ya que en él se inaugura un nuevo subgénero dentro de este campo en el que se concatena la esencia del metal con los nutrientes experimentales. El álbum ha sido grabado en Oslo, Tokyo y Heptonstall, y ha sido mezclado por Andrew Liles y el propio Maniac.

  La discográfica escogida ara publicarlo ha sido Cold Spring, una de las pioneras dentro del noise y el industrial en general, y con la que Maniac ya había trabajado anteriormente de cara a la publicación de los trabajos de Skiltiv. El álbum se presenta únicamente en formato CD, planteado en estructura tríptica y ornamentado con fotografías de la naturaleza en primavera; muestra imágenes de vistosas flores, como es el caso del crino o Crinum x powellii, utilizada para acompañar a la portada, una preciosa flor de origen asiático que forma parte de la familia de las Amariliáceas. Lo único que se le puede reprochar a Maniac es que no haya especificado en los créditos del álbum el nombre éstas, ya que como no sepas un poco de plantas, resulta bastante difícil identificarlas.

  “Wüste” es un disco un tanto nietzscheano, ya que ensalza la naturaleza y se desvincula de concepto objetivo para crear un nuevo valor musical. Es puro nihilismo instrumental que no puede pasar desapercibido por los lectores de Mentenebre.

From Rumore: (by Stefano Morelli)

  Skitliv trovano qui un canale meno limitante (quindi spazio alle (de)formazioni neo dadaiste), ma parte di questo merito va anche attribuito alle partnership con Andrew Liles dei Nurse With Wound e alla sei corde Ingvar Magnusson. Fatta eccezione per brani come Sult o Good Morning Great Moloch, capaci di ibridare il doom sabbathiano con urticanti matrici power noise post merzbowiane, il racconto ospita salmodie minimaliste inquiete, a tratti raccapriccianti, dove la matrice ambient folk assume connotazioni apocalittiche di chiara estrazione allucinatoria alla maniera dei primi Current 93 (Tarn Of Guilt, Stadt Der Engel..., Cunt Queen).