Lorelei‘Угрюмые волны студёного моря’ is the first full-length album from the 10 year old Russian band Lorelei. They label themselves as gothic doom death metal and it’s a fair descriptor as the keyboard laden songs have a heavy but very slow guitar base to go with awesome death growls and stupendous soprano. First off excuse any misspelling that shall take place below, everything on their site is in Russian/Cyrillic and my Russian is a little rusty, read non-existent. All the lyrics are in Russian too, so it’s just a case of aural pleasure rather than cerebral too. With this in mind I’ve used the Latin alphabet for the song names, as they’re slightly easier to read that way, even though my understanding is little improved.

The opening “Intro” is just that, two minutes of thunderstorm and crashing waves morphing into gently picked guitars. Then as “Holod Bezmolvnogo Zimnego Lesa…” starts Alexandr Grischenko’s bass and Marina Ignatovich’s keyboards quietly join the mix as do some pretty heavy death vocals by E.S. (guest vocalist from Who Dies In Siberian Slush). During slow interlude there are some spoken vocals, which I understand, as they are in Italian and upon further reading I discover that the album is inspired by the poetry Francesco Petrarca, one of the founders of the Italian language as spoken now, along with the art of Renaissance and Romanticism from that epoch.

Ksenia “Serafima” Mikhaylova’s vocals are a lush soprano over the contrasting death vocals on “Ten’ju Bezlikoj…” as the guitars of Andrey Osokin and Alexey Ignatovich drive along slowly accompanied by Marina’s keyboards. With the keyboards taking on a dominant presence for “Ugrjumye Volny Studenogo Morja…” as they weave an intricate pattern under the vocals.

“La Vita Fugge, Et Non S’arresta Una Hora…” is a beautiful operatic piece of Petrarca’s poem sung by Ksenia with only a piano for accompaniment. The notes she reaches are stupendous and a feat themself.

The morose melodies played so slowly on the guitars “Ne Vedaja Temnyh Predelov Pechali…” allow guest drummer Vladimir “Vile” Lyashkov (Decay Of Reality and Beheaded Zombie) to thump the kit vigorously without any need for an elevated pace keeping the doomy quality of the music, whereas on “Holodnyj Prizrachnyj Rassvet…” the pace is a little quicker and the snare pounding a touch snappier. E.S.’s vocals are also far more guttural and work well with Alexey Ignatovich’s spoken and Ksenia’s soprano as he sustains the growls.

The doom death they play is flawless and in “Raj Poterjan…” they let it build slowly and it’s the first time you hear “Vile” doing any double kick work as until this point it hasn’t really been required owing to the fact that their heaviness comes from the execution rather than the speed they play.

The “Outro” is piano and the soothing sounds of the waves washing you back out to the frozen Arctic Ocean.

So if you’re after something melancholy but soothingly heavy at the same time, but don’t care an iota whether you can understand a word that’s said… Then you should check them out. Actually just check them out and make up your own mind.

(7/10  Marco Gaminara)

http://www.loreleiband.com