Schatten Muse - Zömeterium
Zömeterium is a term that refers to an ancient Christian tomb, a necropolis, or even a catacomb – it evokes the “place of rest” or “place of sleep” of the deceased – and it is also the title of the third album by Schatten Muse.
For those discovering this project, it is a duo based in Germany and Greece, offering music deeply rooted in the 1980s and 1990s. Schatten Muse aims to continue the 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐫𝐭 / 𝐍𝐞𝐮𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐤𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐭 movement. Their gothic music can be placed alongside groups such as Goethes Erben and Sopor Aeternus.
With this new album, the duo continues its passion-driven journey through a dramatic, intimate atmosphere, where a dark dreamlike aura hovers like a cloud of vultures.
Charged with poetry heavily influenced by Dark Romanticism and imbued with mystical fervor, the duo’s music explores the torments of the human condition through an existential reflection filled with regret and haunted by shadows.
Nostalgia drives the duo’s creative process: funeral-like keyboards lead the dance, underpinned by languid rhythms; electronic arrangements bring a touch of strangeness, while the female vocals carry a timeless and theatrical dimension. This declamatory singing, teetering on the edge of madness and almost fragile, embodies an aesthetic of finitude, the loss of vitality, yet is imbued with a mysterious beauty, reminiscent of a mesmerizing stroll through the fatal slumber of cemeteries.
Ultimately, Schatten Muse’s music is a manifestation of an aesthetic of the uncanny, drawing as much from the notion of Fremdheit (“otherness” or the feeling of existential strangeness) as from Unheimlichkeit – the “uncanny” – evoking the fantastic tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Step across the threshold and let yourself be carried away by the dark and enigmatic tracks of Zömeterium!