[ B O L T ] might be one of the most productive and enigmatic bands in all of Germany, and their splits are always worth a listen, because they colorize every genre with their textures.
There seems to be a little of a trend going on over the course of the last six months for bands to release multiple split EPs either on the same day or shortly after each other – one famous example would be Panopticon and their splits with Aerial Ruin and Nechochwen. A less famous band, but doing some awesome splits is [ B O L T ] who released a split with Morasth from Mainz at the end of last year and one with N at the beginning of 2020. The latter is the seventh release in this ongoing series of collaborations between the drone artist N and [ B O L T ] (who are both, like Morasth, from Western Germany) and the sound is very droney, a bit ambient but always with a bit more soul than a pure electronic version of said genre. The way that [ B O L T ]’s two basses reverb on this record is just mind-bending. The band that jumps to mind as a reference would be AUN. The split with Morasth on the other band is very doom, very rich in harsh riffs and very dark, here the instrumentation is clearly very agitated and not meant to keep the sounds going but let the waves collapse and break off one after the other. The first reference that comes to my mind would be Black Shape of Nexus. The facts that both splits were released by dunk!records just shows how open that label is, and if you then add the total length of both split, which both clock in after circa 40 minutes, you know that you are deep in a listening session you will not forget.
