Mystic Circle: Drachenblut

Drachenblut, the second album from the German black metal, Mystic Circle

Hey, you know that German band Mystic Circle? So I was digging through some old albums and found their 1998 release “Drachenblut” – that’s “Dragon Blood” in English. Man, what a trip down memory lane!

So check this out – back then, these guys were running with a five-piece lineup, trying to catch that symphonic black metal wave that Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir were riding. You know how it was in ’98, everyone was going for that keyboard-heavy, gothic sound.

The funny thing is, this album is kind of like that friend who can’t decide what they want to be when they grow up.

They started as a death metal band, but here they’re doing this whole melodic black metal thing with these huge keyboard parts just floating over everything else. Graf von Beelzebub (love these names, right?) is doing the vocals, and it’s all growls and rasps – proper black metal style.

There’s this one track, “Shadows Over Worms” – it has some pretty killer moments, but honestly, a lot of the other stuff just kind of blends together. The whole album tells this story about knights and sorcery and all that medieval stuff – you know, the usual black metal fare.

Drachenblut on Keyboards

The real kicker is how they went all-in on the keyboards. Like, I get it, you want that symphonic sound, but sometimes it feels like the guitars and drums are just hanging out in the background, not doing much. It’s like they invited the guitarist to a party but made them sit in the corner!

It’s not a bad album, but it’s kind of like when a cover band tries really hard to sound exactly like the original – you can tell they’re talented, but you wish they’d just do their own thing, you know?

The production is all polished and dramatic – definitely not that raw, garage-band black metal sound. That probably ticked off some of the hardcore black metal fans who like their music to sound like it was recorded in a cave!

Fun fact: they had this guy Baalsulgorr on keyboards – again with these names! The whole lineup reads like a Dungeons & Dragons character sheet: Aaarrrgon, Isternos, Ezpharess… Classic late ’90s black metal, right?

Want to hear something really wild? Each track is like 6 minutes long – except for the intro and outro. These guys weren’t messing around with radio edits, that’s for sure!

Mystic Circle Website: https://mysticcircle-official.com

Mystic Circle: Drachenblut