Those wonderful people at Bad Mood Man Music and Solitude Productions continue to do an excellent job in promoting the best in Russian doom, and the very welcome re-issue of Amber Tears long since unavailable 2006 debut is their latest offering. These Russian bands tend to come in varying degrees of accessibility, and those unfamiliar with the language, both spoken and written, will struggle to even identify this album in a shop, as the band name and song titles are all written in the native tongue. Luckily a small amount of internet based investigation will decode the song titles, so there’s no need to go and order the language course just yet. With this album, it’s far better to let the music speak for itself anyway.
Amber Tears brand of folk doom is very similar in approach and sound to their label mates The Morningside. Once we get past the seemingly obligatory rainy introduction, we realise that in this instance there is an excuse rather than just wheeling out a folk doom cliché, as we wander ‘Through Autumnal Rain’. Initially, you could be excused for dismissing this as folk doom by numbers, but when you really listen to the individual components that make up the music you realise that this is a few levels above the average. The clean vocals are very low in the mix and seem rather lost yet they do burn through and have an effect. It is when Anton Bandurin unleashes his formidable death growl that things really pick up, and the combined effect of his vocal delivery and the rich musical composition bears comparison with Draconian’s ‘Arcane Rain Fell’. The musical influences are the obvious ones, including the Peaceville three, early Katatonia, Saturnus and as I said before, Draconian. One of the absolute strongest elements of the band is their use of melody, driven in particular by the guitar pairing of Dmitry Tschukin and Alexey Ryliakin. The lead guitar in particular carries that higher pitched yet expressive and mournful tone, and some of the lead breaks have been enough to set the hairs up on the back of my neck. This, I should point out is a good thing.
The folk sound comes across strongly on tracks like ‘Over The Fields Of Ages’, in which I found a similarity in approach to some of Skyclad’s earlier work. Whilst the melody is very important, it is essential that we don’t overlook the contribution of the rhythm section, with Viktor Kulikov’s drumming being of a particularly high standard, being one of those drummers that is not content merely to provide a beat, but plays with enough creativity to make the drums stand out on their own merit. If only they were slightly higher in the mix…
So much about this album is an absolute joy to listen to, and for fans of folk doom I urge you to seek this out immediately, if not sooner. There is just one small niggling issue that I had with the album though, and that is the final track ‘Renounced Solitude’. Yes, it clocks in at 15 minutes in duration, and normally I would have no issues with that whatsoever, but whoever decided that 10 mins of silence at the start of the track was necessary needs shooting. I was listening to this in the car, and the completely unnecessary break no only ruined the flow of the album, but had me shouting at the band in frustration. Putting that secret track on is one thing, but listing the track and having nearly ten minutes of dead air at the start of it, that’s pretty bloody daft, and I’ve deducted a whole mark from the album as a result. If you take out that long stretch of nothing and take the music as a whole however, this is a stunning album and well worthy of a reissue.
(7.5/10 Lee Kimber)
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