PRESS

"He is fast becoming a 21st century goth legend." - Whisperin and Hollerin (IRE)

"9/10 - between spiritual apocalypse [...] and an eloquent self-analysis in a kind of “Klaus Kinski Dark Wave”. [.] Without a doubt, Alexander Donat aka VLIMMER has always moved skillfully in a mixture of dark wave, post-punk and shoegaze, but now he has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of all this and seems to have found his own musical level, where few can hold a candle to him. [...] Alexander Donat's soul seems to be burning ablaze. It is often easier to classify things into categories and (accurately or incorrectly) reference to other musicians. This no longer works with Vlimmer. Vlimmer is Vlimmer." - Ox-Fanzine (GER)

"The most powerful musical experience of the year! [It] made such a deep impression on me. I've been wading through the seemingly endless ocean of dark music for 30 years, and I never thought there were so many shades of black as Vlimmer's new LP presents. [It] provides a uniquely complex, shockingly new and mysterious musical experience. [...] Donat soars amazingly freely in the dark-underground universe, erasing the walls and expectations around the styles [...] so that the genius creates something completely unique and astonishing with his enormous creativity and dark passion." - Kollektiva (HUN)

"[N]o exaggeration to say that the musician is now one of the most important Goth protagonists. [...] Absorbs everything that the black scene has to offer musically in order to create something completely original in the end. [...] But what's really amazing about Alexander is that the man doesn't seem to run out of energy or creativity. [...] With "Zerschöpfung" he once again underlines his claim to make sophisticated melancholic music." - Unter.Ton (GER)

"13/15 - tip! While other bands that operate at the interface of darkwave and post-punk simply provide musical accompaniment to the lyrics, Vlimmer generates a pair of sound-lyrics scissors and is therefore good for a surprise again, as in the past." Legacy Magazine (GER)

"I continue to be amazed at the striking ease with which Alexander manages to package his seemingly inexhaustible creativity in a successful multi-layered album... As if it takes no effort at all. [T]he sound is quite unique in the scene and unites reverberating and delirious synths with hollow and then sharply choppy rhythms and abrasive guitar sounds. [...] Vlimmer seems to swallow up an amalgam of influences and spit out its own musical language that differs even album after album, but always sounds like Vlimmer. [T]he album exudes a certain heaviness, a claustrophobic colossus, a bottomless pit that is packaged in a bright blue cover, blue the shade of stability, intelligence and truth." - Dark Entries (BEL)

"Never fails to surprise and delight, [he] might be the crazed mad scientist of the German post-punk world." - Onyx Music Reviews (AUS)

"8.5/10 - dark, dense and rich [...] With his predecessor albums, Donat showed what modern darkwave has to say with its own Berlin touch and he can still build bridges. Especially fans of the New Wave of the early 1980s and post punk will enjoy the production and the strongly synth-dominated sound.[...] Vlimmer manages to generate his very own cosmos, which also scores points with his German-language lyrics and the striking vocals [...] If you think you've heard everything about shoegaze / post punk and don't know Vlimmer yet, we warmly recommend you." - Soundmagnet (GER)

"[F]irmly rooted to the past while searching for new gothic ground to break [they] demonstrate a greater propensity toward proto-industrial and, dare we say, progressive aesthetics. [...] Donat’s songwriting still incorporates a melodic pop sensibility [...] but all the while, each song undergoes a transition from a standard verse/chorus structure toward something even more esoteric than we’ve heard from Vlimmer." - ReGen Magazine (USA)

"A masterclass in the gothier musics – specifically post punk/industrial/darkgaze. Picking up where bands like the Cure and Joy Division left off sort of starts to give you the idea of the sound, but not the whole picture. The drum machine, sorrowful lyrics, and synth are all there – along with Vlimmer’s impeccable attention to detail throughout." - BuffaBlog (USA)

"8/10 - This is probably my favorite Vlimmer-album. [...] The concept sounds dark and the album takes off this way as well. After a poignant, gothic-like intro cut Vlimmer explores the darkest corners of darkwave music. [It] sounds like Vlimmer at its best. I especially enjoy the tortured atmosphere emerging at “Flurfall”. You literally feel a kind of painful expression there. Other tracks like “Platzwort” are more melodic although still exploring the dark side of life. “Fatalideal” sounds pure 80s-like and even evokes the imaginary hybrid between X Mal Deutschland and Cocteau Twins." - Side-Line Magazine (BEL)

"This is one of my favourite Vlimmer albums. [...] [D]ark and brooding, but features bright, sweet-sounding synths. The contrast makes for a complex and emotional experience for the listener. "Zerschöpfung" offers desperate-sounding vocals reminiscent of Robert Smith, with funky basslines tht dance together with chirpy synthesizers and chamber vocals." - ISSUES Magazine (USA)

"[N]ailed it" - Brutal Resonance (USA)

"Vlimmer rules [...] Donat knows better than anyone how to color and shape all those genres in his own unique way. Of course there are names like #TheCure, Clan of Xymox, Orchestral manoeuvres in the Dark, Ritual Howls, Deftones, Wumpscut and Modern English that I can use as reference but Vlimmer really has created his own sound. It's become an equally beautiful and deeply emotional work. Wonderful for the melancholics among us." - De Subjectivisten (NL)

"Personalities and musicians of superior caliber - a category of imaginative champions to which Alexander belongs with full merit. [...] Today Vlimmer appears more than ever ready for the big leap […] with the best stylistic synthesis of this project. [...] Vlimmer literally never stops improving with every new release." - Darkroom Magazine (ITA)

"[C]razy in the most positive sense. I don't even bother to describe this music in any way, that would mean standing in front of the same wall that critics stared at in the early 80s when they came into contact with Einstürzende Neubauten. [...] bittersweetness is gallantly peppered with opulence. It sounds like pain, it sounds like harmony, it sounds like disharmony, in connection with the devoted, latently suffering singing it sounds ghostly. [...] Listening to Vlimmer is like going to the art house cinema. [...] A work full of emotions to be freely discovered, small anecdotes and overall an emotional hurricane." - Amboss Mag (GER)

"Zerschöpfung feels like a summation of the style he’s established as his own, able to speak to various sides of underground and outsider musics without either losing itself in the emotionalism of the songs or sublimating identity to genre [...] hearing The Cure off in “Makks” and “Fatalideal” taken to a place of progressive extrapolation on “Platzwort” and to hear the Author & Punisher-informed slow industrial churn of the penultimate “Todesangst” become the backdrop for a dreamy vocal like Tears for Fears if they stayed up all night scribbling in their notebook because they had so much to say." - The Obelisk (USA)

"Captures the sound of bleak loss perfectly. [...] Something to listen to on your own, in the dark late at night, this album is yet another great entry. [...] The music here is pretty great, with me wondering at times if this was the very best that Vlimmer has ever sounded. Tracks like 'Teerritt', 'Platzwort', and 'Fataideal' were so darn good to listen to. [...] you can feel so much emotion with the way the lyrics are sung. This is a mournful journey into darkness, best exemplified with third track 'Makks'." - The Rotting Zombie (UK)

"[T]he album's ostensible softness gradually transforms into emotional steel wool. [...] Vlimmer is still fatalism set to music [...] oscillating back and forth between danceable darkwave and more negative post-punk. Because of this polarity, the album also sounds a bit looser and less depressing than its predecessor. [...] in many ways “Zerschöpfung” seems a bit like a defiance album. The lyrics often read like psychoanalyses of a tormented mind that is aware of the futility and meaninglessness of its life. But the music's (at the same time often strange) catchiness makes it somehow positive, even if not in the classic sense."- Musikreviews.de (GER)

"The general instrumentation, especially the use of synths, is completely on the money. Happily, unlike a lot of tunes of this genre, the vocal does not disappoint and sits well amongst all the sound textures. Joyous gloom is the name of the day" - Green Banana (UK)

"Turbulent, amazing, a great undertaking with great results [...] Try the dark wild dance of “Flurfall”, then go to “Teerritt” for a throwback to the first ‘ingredients’ of pure new wave music, and turn up the volume at the “Gipfelluft” for the beloved industrial ‘neubautenism’, and the same industrialism will nail you happily again in the tardy style of “Todesangst”, and cheers to the opening intro “Losig” which with a remix can become a glorious track to dance to its pressure, and the closing track of the album, “Austrocknung” that many of you will hear it as the coolest song of the album and you are probably right." - White Light/White Heat (ITA)

"In a crossover of darkwave, post-punk, industrial and new wave, Vlimmer remains unfailingly inventive and involved: here is a new and poignant edifice of nine tracks of which you feel the demand for detail and the emotional involvement from the start of "Losig", followed by the inhabited "Flurfall" whose rhythmic tribal accents hypnotize you and recall the best of old fashion coldwave vintages." - Obsküre Digital Media (FRA)

"Vlimmer, the busy genre-busting artist from Berlin with a penchant for neologisms, has released a new album called “Zertreibung” – a good metaphor for the state of society between exhaustion and thirst for creativity: it contains songs that are melancholically melodic between post-punk , goth rock and industrial shimmer. Vlimmer is reminiscent of related acts such as Crystal Soda Cream, The Cure or Whispering Sons, but always retains its idiosyncratic touch." - Tonspion (GER)

"[A] dark, but soothing musik excursion through the mist and dimly lit yet inviting places. [It] is music for beautiful tragedies. Make no mistake about it. These are mournful sounds. Musically, this recalls bands like The Cure during their "Seventeen Seconds" era, as well as the dark but danceable modern apprentices that goth has created." - Alt77 (SWE)

"Vlimmer as a project starts to deviate more and more from his heavily 80s-influenced roots. He will not lose them, but always adds a little more of his own identity! Beautiful." - Luminous Dash (BEL)

"Yes, the vocals! They’re deep, sonorous and they add a lot of darkness to the music. I really like the gloomy soundscape" - Indie Tapes (GER)

"Alexander is initially "Losig" relaxed and surrounds cold synth wave with nebulous melodies, before he takes a step onto the dancefloor in "Flurfall" with fragile vocals, and then with "Makks" he completely arrives in the fairytale-like, syncopated rhythm. [...] Zerschöpfung" as a whole is the development of creativity and potential in the cold synth wave sector, without expressing the feeling of exhaustion or overload, rather than taking more time for yourself." - Underdog Fanzine (GER)

"I don’t know what Germany’s Vlimmer is saying but throughout the dark wave post punk atmospheres of “Makks” he says it so broodingly well.” - American Pancake (USA)

"Apocalyptic flood and apocalyptic drought alternate. [...] The claustrophobia [#1 album] and the trance dance [#2 album] are followed by fighting on all fours. VLIMMER's third studio album experiences a real identity crisis, completely with exhaustion and bleeding." - Saitenkult (GER)

"The post-punk display of German excellence is highlighted by the tone of the synths and the gothic style. [...] The synthesizer paints a foreboding landscape. I love the guitar that leads into the drop on Gipfelluft. [...] My favourite track: Teerritt, because I feel like it represents everything the album portrays through its music." - Issues Magazine (USA)

"The inspiration behind the new work is in fact profoundly different from that from which [album two] was born: light and designed for the dancefloor. "Zerschöpfung" offers dark landscapes, born from tormented states of mind, and expressed by sounds close to post-punk, in its manifestations darker." - Ver Sacrum (ITA)