Year: 2025
Label: Ural Megalith
Rating: 8,5 / 10
The band MERKNET from Urals, which exists since 2009, is perhaps one of the most ideological ones in Russia. At its origins are former and current members of, for example, ВАРХХОРН and CORONA BARATHRI. From the very beginning, MERKNET embarked on the path of occult Black Metal, filled with religious fanaticism, and remain on it to this day. Occult Black Metal as a global phenomenon exhausted itself about 10 years ago: most bands of this style either underwent a transformation or conserved themselves and turned to terribly boring self-plagiarism with endless copycat songs about "ovs", rituals and sephiroths, which could have been written by artificial intelligence with the same level of success. As always happens in such cases, the most distinctive and sincere works in the style are now made by bands that do not pretend to play in Wacken but really believe in their work – like MERKNET.
“Безвременье мантии сфер” is a conceptual mini album consisting of only three tracks: the introduction, the main part and the ending. But all the tracks are very long, so the release almost reaches the “full-length” 40 minutes. In fact, the division here is rather arbitrary, since “Безвременье” in fact is a very homogenous work. This is some kind of long Black Metal prayer or sermon, bounded by very bizzare ambient metal from both sides. The press release describes the album as "a conceptual epic that contains a series of experiments and a play of complex metaphorical images,” and this is 100% true. For the most part, the huge lyrics to the only song here are impossible to understand without getting into the author's head, but it is very interesting to listen to them, especially since these words complement the music perfectly.
"Experiments" in relation to "Безвременье..." is not an empty word. The album was created with the participation of the Academic Ensemble of Medieval Music FLOS FLORUM and its head Alexander Starkov. This man builds new musical instruments himself, and some of them can be heard here. FLOS FLORUM understood their task perfectly, creating a very unusual, multi-layered sound in the opening and final tracks, which reminded me of Roman Sayenko's DARK AGES with its gloom and ominousness (with the difference that everything here is real). What you will hear is difficult to describe in words. Such things are critically rare in metal. You will certainly recognize some individual elements, but I have never seen such a high concentration of them. This is not just some kind of “dark tribal medieval ambient”, but a full-fledged music.
The central track moves at a slow but steady pace. Dramatic guitars aim for high spheres, and the vocalist's voice, permeated with religious zealotry, explodes into a fiery proselytizing recitative, then breaks into an angry scream. The drum part practically does not change for the entire 20 and a half minutes, but the guitar structures smoothly merge into each other, synchronizing themselves with changes in the content of the lyrics. Throughout the song, you won't find any blast beats or any "dynamics" at all, but it's okay, because this song is built by a principle of the tree. From the root, which is the starting riff, another riffs-branches begin to grow, and they, in turn, give birth to more branches. The song goes through them all. In the finale, you hear something completely different from the beginning, but the overall feeling remains the same, because all these riffs are born from a single grain. There is no such effect as if you are listening to a few completely different songs glued into one, as is often the case with elongated tracks.
From a technical point of view, “Безвременье мантии сфер” is a more than competent release. It is three heads above everything that MERKNET released before. Of course, there was no other option, because you wouldn't invite an entire medieval band to record it in a garage. Both the metal and non-metal aspects of the album sound great. I have not found any reason to complain. By the way, the album was recorded back in 2018, and now MERKNET is preparing two new albums at once. Objectively speaking, "Безвременье мантии сфер” deserves the highest praise. This is a release that fulfills all its goals thoroughly, and I have no ideas about what could be fixed in it. But I'm giving it a slightly more restrained rating, because it seems to me that "Безвременье..." is unable to stand the test of time. Like any ritual, this is a unique and one-time event. You can listen to it a second, third, tenth time and find new nuances – and there are many of them – but it will be a repetition of some sacred action. When you turn to a higher power once, it has great value. If you turn to it over and over with the same requests, the value of this action decreases. I hope you understand the analogy.
The physical release from Ural Megalith has a form of A5 digibook. Strict monochrome, lyrics, detailed information about the release, thematic art from the vocalist of the band. Details on a video.
