Country: Russia Release Date: 2003 Record Label: Ascent Records Track list: Band Website: Temnozor |
Temnozor - Horizons
My introduction to this band was their demo, which I found to be a rather humorous affair at the time, with a rice-paper thin guitar tone and silly screeching pipes and vocals. Imagine my surprise when I heard this album and realized how far they'd actually come. I am not really a fan of folk metal, but I think when it's actually done well it can be extremely satisfying, and this is the best folk metal release I can recall hearing in a long time. This will come as a shock to a great many people who dismiss bands from the NS scene as being a bunch of talentless wankers who place their politics before their music. I suspect that, were a lot of these critics to hear this album, they would be blown away by its power until they became conversant with the band's ideology, at which point they would flatly deny that it is better than 90% of the trite that passes off for metal nowadays, ironically, putting their own politics above art and thus showing themselves to be quite hypocritical. At any rate, I don't think many "outsiders" will end up hearing this album because of the small label that released it and because of the obvious racial connotations linked with the band, even if the band itself seems to refrain from making over the top Darken-esque "way of the white warrior" statements, at least in the couple of English interviews I have seen. In many ways, though I'm sure the band would disagree with me, I think the lack of publicity this will receive is a shame, since the album is so damn captivating that I can't see how anyone could fail to be moved upon hearing it. But above all that, the principal feeling one gets from listening to this album is an overpowering sense of glory, of the flame of pride and spirit kindled to a beautiful, positive, yet also warlike and dangerous strength. The melodies in these songs, often led by the this-time quite profficient use of the pipe (I mean apan-flute, not bagpipes) will etch themselves into your brain and from there reach to the core of your being, so that the very act of listening to this music makes one feel revitalized, strengthened and ready to grind down the opposition. The craftsmanship of this music is truly amazing and such a far cry from the earlier work. The intro perfectly sets the scene, and careful listeners will note that this introduction is actually a showcase for some of the melodies and "riffs" that will later crop up during the course of the album. This piece is an energetic and boisterous keyboard ditty which, although I am not usually a great fan of such things, perfectly sets the stage for the coming attack. The sound on the album is perfect: crystal clear and representative for all instrumentation....even the cymbal hits are perfectly accentuated, and the guitar tone is thick and vibrant. Vocals are mostly either a hoarse bellowing (which reminds me, slightly, of the aggressive but clean toned vocalizations on Amorphis's 'Elegy' of all things), and a resonant, proud operatic tenor that thankfully smacks of someone with professional vocal training, rather than the usual painful ululations employed by many a folk metal band. There are a few black metal screams as well, on track five I believe, the longest on the album and one of the clear highlights for me. Other standouts include "White Thunder Roars" and the fourth track, whose title I believe translates as "Whatever the Burial Mounds Might Whisper". The former features a melody previously heard in the intro (though transposed to a different key I believe) as its main riff, is very repetitive and catchy and includes some quite understandable english lyrics. The latter is an absolutely beautiful piece led by gentle acoustic guitar and proud soaring tenor vocals..definitely the calmest track featured here and it just drips with strong yet somehow mournful emotion. There are also a couple of very well done ambient piecs aside from the intro; one being short and focussing on clean guitar, the other being a majestic and ghostly album closer that brings one down from the fist-pumping high this music generates. In closing, I would just like to ask that people put their political trappings aside for the sake of this great band, and understand that sometimes appreciation of art comes with a price..that being that you can't always live in a comfortable world in which every emotion in the art you enjoy stems to and from beliefs and ideologies you can completely support. This is just the way it is, and to claim that it's wrong to support a band because they make you feel uncomfortable or don't share your cozy little belief system is pretentious and stupid. If you dislike something, it ought to be because you can tell the art is subservient to a political agenda, or that the art in question happens to be mostly useless and lacking in real depth. I will be the first to admit that most so-called NS Metal is completely meritless...that with a few notable exceptions the whole "scene" is made up of a bunch of unintelligent pandering children who are just treading water and will only stay afloat with their bandwagon, but I submit that the nationalist ideologies, at least in Europe, have a strong founding and one which has little at all to do with so-called Nazism. I have never been to Russia, but I expect there are very few non-Russians living there still, and that many natives would wish to keep it that way and can probably point to a dozen logical and well-founded reasons as to why this is a good idea. But enough of the political essay...this is a music review after all. Temnozor deserve respect: for crafting a powerful and compelling work that is absolutely filled with real emotion, for being "true" in the sense that they do not believe in gimmicks, but empower their art with what they see as absolute truth and passion, for realizing that this type of music needs to sound good and professional and not like some "ultra grim KVLT 4-track recording", and for transporting me to another, better world with their symphonies, for at least a short time. White thunder roars!!!
August 4th, 2005 |
