Year of release: 2017
Label: Thou Shalt Kill! Records
Rating: 8,3 / 10
My little vacation in Belgium is over, which means it's time to return to a pleasant routine. First of all, I suddenly had a desire to review the album, which has been on the table for almost six months. “Kurukshetra Brahmastra War” is the first work of the SS-18 which I listened to in its entirety. Before that, only individual tracks reached my ears, and with them everything was about the same as with other projects with the participation of Sadist: with your mind you understand that this is good and right, but the soul is seeking something else.
“Kurukshetra Brahmastra War” managed to catch it right away, although, as you see, it is only now I managed to gather my thoughts of it in a bunch. For me, this is primarily a musical album. Regarding the lyric part, alas, I don’t have much to say, as my knowledge of Hinduism, by and large, is limited to the song "Maha Kali" by DISSECTION. The mixture of religious vision with the theme of a nuclear apocalypse delights with its poetic nature, but it is obvious to me that the listener who knows a thing or two about Hinduism will find much more in SS-18 texts. I note that the lyrics to the album is excellent from a purely literary point of view, as well as both traditional and non-banal simultaneously.
The music on “Kurukshetra Brahmastra War” is eclectic in a good way. This is all Black Metal, but very diverse. I can not stand industrial metal, and therefore I ignored SS-18 for quite a long time, but on this album industrialism does not mean the presence of idiotic clanging samples and passing vocals through some fucking Kanye West's robotic shit. “Kurukshetra Brahmastra War” sounds harsh and disastrous, like a nuclear apocalypse; The album evokes images of fire and technology, bringing death to the whole world - this is the “industrialism” here. This is about the sound: completely live, but to a certain extent soulless. It is difficult to characterize music in general, because it is constantly changing. Each new track is not similar to the previous one. All sorts of techniques, solutions and decisions are used - except the most ancient ones, in the vein of BATHORY, HELLHAMMER etc. Therefore, it's meaningless to search for parallels. On the whole album I can notice only two regularities: the prevailing blast beat and a slow bias towards epicity and melody with each next song. The most delicious cake, however, is the penultimate thing, “Mahapralaya”, subtly reminiscent of "Навсегда" by KRUK. It's layers consist of slow, heavy rhythms, and catchy guitar and keyboard melodies are additional sweets. The last song, "Reminiscence", puts the dot under the album, but musically it is inferior to “Mahapralaya”, because the latter leaves behind a complete devastation.
Summing up, I boldly declare: “Kurukshetra Brahmastra War” should be taken, if only because it is a very independent album - a rare thing in modern music. SS-18 was lucky to develop its own style, which successfully embodied here. The disk is issued in the form of an interestingly folding six-panel hardback. More details on a video.
English (UK) 
Крыўская