Rossomahaar are Russian avant-garde melodic black metal band that over the years have started to incorporate influences from other genres, from symphonic to jazz. They were formed in 1995 by Lazar (guitar) and Vlad (drums and vocals), starting as a side project to the band Stonehenge. In 1997 the two members disagreements ended up in the departure of Vlad. Despite being alone Lazar recorded alone the demo “Grotesque" and since there Lazar is in control of theRossomahaar project. Since 1997 Rossomahaar as experimented with symphonic, russian folk and jazz music, their overall sound is a mid paced melodic black metal often using synth and unorthodox acoustic instruments (such as saxophone and trombone). Many of the band works are available for free download from the official site (including this EP).
This EP is the latest release by the band and is composed by three tracks forming a total length of 14 minutes and 21 seconds, and works as promo for their upcoming album.
For this album the collective worked as a trio compromising Lazar on guitar, vocals and keyboards; Kniaz on bass and Artist on drums.
The first track entitled "Ragnaroek 2014" features a brief keyboard intro followed by a sudden change introducing guitars and drums, as the song progresses there are several tempo changes ranging from semi-whispered vocals accompanied by a slow keyboard riff to create some kind of spooky atmosphere to distorted screams featuring blast beats and fast guitar riffs. To me this is the strongest track in this EP.
The second track "Naidi, Ubey!" is the most traditional heavy metal song of the EP. The drums take a key part in the song and the keyboards unlike the first jump to a secondary position appearing in the chorus and few places more, this song also feature a shy guitar solo accompanied by sampled folk sting instruments.
The final track "Generation-Zero" is the most power metal influenced song, with a style reminding Children of Bodom. The song structure is pretty simple and the only thing that really separates Rossomahaar from the finish group in this song is the vocals which have a lower register than Laiho's.
The production isn't bad far from that for a band of this style on their situation they have a good production, sometimes the drums (specially) sound weird, but thats something a black metal fan wont mind.
Overall the EP isn't bad but it's kind of disappointing the departure from the jazz fusion sound, in this EP there is no sax like in the previous albums and no vargan or domra like in the previous EP "Moscow (The sanguine Reign of Terror)" released in 2006, which to me leaves some doubts about the new album yet to be released (entitled "The Reign of Terror"). Anyway this isn't a bad release but still I think you should check out older stuff first, especially if you're a avant-garde or experimental music enthusiast.
This is a good EP, the three tracks are quite different, what make us think about how will be the entire album.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion:
The first track was the most developed, good instrumentation and vocal. It seems a final version.
The second is a good track too, but sometimes the guitar should be more included, specially the solos.
The first sounds the most distinct, the most "confuse" track, what would make me curious about the entire album.
Well, that's it.