Swiss black metal enigma Paysage d'Hiver released its third album, Die Berge (Eng.: The Mountains) today through Kunsthall Produktionen.

Parallel to Die Berge, Paysage d'Hiver also released its Schnee (Eng.: Snow) cycle today, originally sold as an A5 digipak CD in 2020, now comes out in the band's standard formats on vinyl and cassette tape for the first time.

On picture postcards, the mountains of the Alpes are idyllic places where the sun always shines over green meadows and smiling faces. In truth,  these ragged peaks that unfathomable tectonic forces have crushed upwards and out of the thin cold crust of this planet create a harsh and hostile environment for humans.

On the third album, Die Berge, Paysage d'Hiver's mastermind Wintherr perfectly captured the essence of his mountainous Swiss home within the sound of raw black metal. Note for note, these grey giants of rock come awake to life in song. Majestic, powerful,  dangerous, threatening, and yet also inherent in fierce beauty, these massive tracks of epic length echo the huge proportions of their source of inspiration and amount to a playing time of more than 100 minutes.

Paysage d'Hiver relentlessly drags souls into its winter world of darkness and ice. With each release, Paysage d'Hiver narrates a new chapter of a continuing story about a mysterious protagonist called "Der Wanderer". Die Berge takes its wanderer into its 14th chapter, which might end up as his last. The main album's theme is death, and this time, the enigmatic wanderer's journey is comparable to that of a Zen monk who hikes to the mountain's peak on feeling that his time has come.

With Die Berge, Paysage d'Hiver continues to expand the horizon of Nordic black metal without ever stepping away from its roots. Link