Music / Carach Angren

Carach Angren are a Dutch symphonic Black Metal band. Formed in 2003, they took an approach similar to King Diamond, with each album being a Concept Album telling a ghost story.

Discography:

• Lammendam (2008)
• Death Came Through a Phantom Ship (2010)
• Where the Corpses Sink Forever (2012)
• This Is No Fairytale (2015)
• Dance and Laugh Amongst the Rotten (2017)
• Franckensteina Strataemontanus (2020)

Little tropers, what have you done?

• And I Must Scream: The fate of the main character in Where the Corpses Sink Forever: Forced to relive all the horrors of the seven demons's stories, screaming in sadness and despair by the end.
• Ascended Meme: The "You came to the wrong forest, motherfucker" meme has gained notoriety and recognition by the band. They apparently found it amusing enough to release it on their hoodies and shirts.
• Concept Album: Thus far, each of their albums has consistently told a story, although Lammendam went off on a tangent with "Heretic Poltergeist Phenomena". Although a big explanation...
  • Lammendam focuses on the urban legend of the Woman in White.
  • Death Came Through a Phantom Ship focuses on the origin of the Flying Dutchman.
  • Where the Corpses Sink Forever focuses on a soldier forced to witness seven demons's stories of war.
  • This is No Fairy Tale is a twisted version of fairy tale stories focusing on two children ala Hansel and Gretel.
• Driven to Suicide: Happens often in their albums.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Averted, in that most of their lyrics are in English, but they slip into their native Dutch every once in a while without expectation.
• Large Ham: Seregor, especially when he's reading the lines of a character. Notable examples include pretty much any of his readings of Van Der Decken's lines on Death Came Through A Phantom Ship, and that of the violinist in "The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist".
• Long-Runner Line-up: A type 1. From 2003-2020, the band consisted of Seregor, Ardek, and Namtar. Franckensteina Strataemontanus would be Namtar's last album with the band before leaving in 2020.
• Malevolent Masked Man: Seregor invokes this in live performances, where he puts on a crowned mask that resembles his corpsepaint. He also sells masks.
• Metal Scream: Fittingly for a black metal band, Seregor has a standard type 3.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Their first two albums are about ghosts. "Heretic Poltergeist Phenomena" explains it best:
  Ghost, a lost semi-transparent appearance
  Soul, a fog-like human form of mental anger, caught between life and death
  
  A threatening presence of an invisible personality
  It keeps bewitching the sceneries of earth instead of departing to a much more blissfull world
  
  Doomed and forgotten in a mortal realm of bloom
  Repeating tragedy summoned by the moon
• Shout-Out:
  • The band's name comes from The Lord of the Rings, and is a Sindarin word for "Iron Jaws".
  • Their ex-drummer, Namtar, is named after a god from Mesopotamian Mythology.
• Soprano and Gravel: Every now and then, clean vocals are used to indicate that a different character is speaking. Jarringly enough, this was averted on "Bloodstains on the Captain's Log", when Seregor uses his own voice for Van Der Decken's wife Catharina.
• Symphonic Metal: Symphonic black metal.
• Twist Ending: The ending of This is No Fairy Tale: The female protagonist realizes she and her sibling were ever in any fairy-like danger...she simply imagined everything as a way to cope with her abusive home life, with her drunken father arriving home...
• Undeathly Pallor: The band's corpsepaint invokes the image of ghosts.

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