51st part of the short revies.
VALOSTA VARJOON – Oberpfälzer Wald
Year of release: 2019
Label: Purity Through Fire
Rating: 7 / 10
Traditional release from PTF: atmospheric and melodic German metal with simple rhythms and a bias in nationalism. The name in Finnish and the general expressive palette are drawn in parallel with NATTFOG, SATANIC WARMASTER and GOATMOON, but the Germans, as usual, made everything too polished. But the album is still good.
AETHYRICK – Gnosis
Year of release: 2020
Label: The Sinister Flame
Rating: 6,5 / 10
And here are the real Finns, whose debut “Praxis” I reviewed in full format. The ideological and thematic component based on magical practices remained in place, but the music, unfortunately, became more ordinary and superficial. The feeling of touching the natural energies, characteristic of "Praxis", has practically disappeared - only melodious metal with pleasant guitar parts remained.
FOREST MYSTICISM / KRYPTA NICESTWA – Mirrors of Glaciated Earth
Year of release: 2019
Label: Nebular Carcoma Records
Rating: 6 / 10
Small Polish-Australian split. KRYPTA NICESTWA is a promising-sounding Polish duo whose song, based on poems by a young Polish poet Zenon Pshesmytsky, resembles something between DUSK and the second ANABOTH album: a dreary, melancholic and sloppy played thing. Nice and not so beaten. FOREST MYSTICISM is a project from a guy of WOODS OF DESOLATION, playing about the same secondary material heard a thousand times, but with an extra bit of sugar. The project's message is good, but the music does not convince, and a dirty sound, perhaps, even exacerbates the situation (I myself am surprised that I say this). The reverse side of the cassette for some reason contains the same songs in the variants of “raw mix” (as if the originals are not enough “raw”).
SICULICIDIUM – Utolsó vágta az Univerzumban
Year of release: 2009
Label: Sun & Moon Records
Rating: 6,7 / 10
Anniversary LP reissue of the debut album of the Romanian duo. Last year’s EP of this band hooked me with a non-trivial approach and rather bold ambitions almost of MASTER’S HAMMER level, but in 2009 they played in a bad way more simple music. Attentive users of Metal Archives saw in Romanian music a resemblance to INQUISITION - in fact, solemn fragments with acoustics and a wall of guitar sound with long singing resemble the masterpieces of Dagon and Incubus. However, it is unlikely that the Romanians were inspired by INQUISITION consciously, because the Americans really developed this side of their music only on the album of 2010 release. Rather, here we are talking about a rather original interpretation of GRAVELAND. One way or another, the album is not striking, although individual fragments are catchy as hell.
VOIDFIRE – Ogień Pustki
Year of release: 2020
Label: self-release
Rating: 6 / 10
The debut album of the Polish band which I agreed to briefly review, given my great love for Polish metal, although the music is not my cup of tea. VOIDFIRE play melodic metal at high speeds: from blast beats to quite thrashy segments and back through acoustic interludes. It’s rather difficult to name any analogues, since I rarely listen to such albums. For instance, AETHYRICK from the top of today's Blitz perform something similar, but better. The last EMPEROR album comes to mind, but probably more because of the similarities between the two quite budget records, where the guitars sound great and the drums are weak. The album’s pluses include a constant feeling of tension and melancholy. The cover from Beksinsky is also beautiful. The lyrics that suffered a little from the tautology turned out to be uninteresting - they were all personal experiences that perfectly fit with the mood of the album, but they make me remember the saying “no one gives a fuck about other's grief". All in all, I carefully recommend it to lovers of intense and fairly diverse melodic metal performed on a classic set of instruments.
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