Saint Petersburg – the town of the Neva, Nevsky Prospect and Nikolai Gogol. Well, at least that’s where some of his most famous stories are set. I have never been there, unfortunately, but I sure would like to visit this Venice of the North. Maybe sometime in the distant future, when we all wake up from this collective nightmare. And from Saint Petersburg hail three-piece Epitimia. Now, that was a smooth transition, don’t you think? Anyway, if the band’s origins are any indicator, their music should be special at least. Let’s see if they meet the expectations.
Established in 2008, Epitimia, have been difficult to fathom straight from their beginnings. And the job isn’t made any easier with Allusion, their sixth full-length album. Shaped by numerous influences, among them obviously their hometown and country, the band’s music is difficult to classify. For the most part, this is depressive black metal, but spiked with shoegaze and post rock passages. And while there have been and still are bands around with a similar sound – for example Lifelover, Kall (Lifelover’s follow up band) and An Autumn for Crippled Children – none of them sing in Russian. So, yes, this is special to a certain extent.
Contrary to black metal custom, the vocals on Allusion are not mixed into the background and can well be heard most of the time. The naturally darker character of Russian goes very well with the black metal template of tremolo picked guitars and relentless drumming. But what’s the use of audible lyrics if you don’t understand the language? Well, thankfully the press material included an English translation of the lyrics and I suppose the album does too. Their themes are, as was to be expected, of a brooding, ruminating, and self-reflecting nature. An unstable, morphing, shifting self is also fittingly depicted in the striking, surreal and avant-gardist cover art.
Allusion starts out with Animist and melodic, atmospheric black metal. The pace picks up with the second track Melencolia I, and by track number three, Waiting for the Doom, which has a deeper and overall more grinding sound than its predecessors, a dark, gloomy atmosphere is established. After this follows I Aspire Like A Bird, my favourite piece of music on the album. Dreamy, meandering guitars accompany the black metal, as well as folky and post rock parts, thereby creating a beautifully melancholic yet not kitschy piece of music. This is where the album reaches its climax, if you ask me. But with track number five things start heading off into another direction. The male vocals, so far ranging somewhere between shrieking and growling, become shriekier and remind me more of emo than of black metal. In addition, they are joined by clean, dreamy female vocals, creating a completely different atmosphere from the one that was build up by the four previous tracks. And that’s the way things continue, culminating in the seventh and final track, Post Scriptum, which combines blackgaze with something that sounds like Russian pop.
So, what to say in the end? The singing in Russian definitively gives Epitimia’s compositions a special character. I like that. At times, this works extremely well. But the rather sentimental pop music parts, to be heard especially on the last track, Post Scriptum, neutralize the ferocity of the black metal and do not appeal to me in the least. From a philosophical, aesthetic and sonic point of view, pop and black metal just don’t go together. Also, clocking in at almost an hour, the album seems a bit too long. I can’t help but feel that the listening experience would have been more compact and concise without the post scriptum.
(6.5/10 Slavica)
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