Smoldering Existence

This Russian one-man depressive ambient BM act has been pumping out cassettes of bleedingly raw mournful blackgaze every year since it first saw light (or darkness) way back in 2009. Already 2017 is no different with the release of "Smoldering Existence" (sic) - the only question is whether main man Neratoh still feels sufficiently depressed to release yet more cassettes during the remainder of the year.

"Empty Man" gets the album off to a good start: good news is that for nearly 8 minutes there's not much empty here as angular near-industrial chainsaw guitars and wailing, howling vocals fill up the space with sheer desperation and pain. The music can sound a little thin as the drumming is so subdued as to be more sensed than heard. "Illusory Time" continues the torment with a more definite and sedate rhythm and the riffs to match. With a repetitive melody for most of its length and raging voices behind the grinding, scratching music, the song evokes a sense of hopeless struggle against dark forces in one's life. "Madness" is a much slower, doomier, sadder track though those vocals never let up on their nagging screams and howls of pain. Again this is a very monotonous and repetitive track.

Interspersed among these songs are three ambient pieces that form the "Aion" trilogy, though they are all very different with one part being all keyboard-based ambient and another centred around a solo lead guitar. Of these three pieces, "Aion II" is the most interesting - this is the track that features the sinuous lead guitar melody against a cold space ambient background - while the others aren't really worth bothering about. The rest of the album proceeds with "Bitter Truth" another prosaic piece of churning guitars and screeching that gets very tedious after previous tracks where Neratoh has done much the same. "Ascetic" picks up with more varied (if tortured) music, vocals that finally find their anger and rage at the system and society that crush the powerless and sidelined marginals, and some real emotion and drama. At this point in the album though - "Ascetic" is the last track - it's perhaps a case of too little too late as so much of the album has coasted along in a mechanical way.

While this cassette isn't bad and has featured a consistent level of technical skill, most songs seem very ordinary and stodgy. The music lacks energy and real anger. Apart from "Aion II", most of the ambient music is dull and uninspired. The lo-fi production job doesn't help as it blocks out some of the quieter music and blunts its edge. At times the vocals sound as though they're an autopilot looping over and over.

Compared to some earlier Viselnik releases I've heard and reviewed, and which actually had some energy and fire, this album really is just "smoldering" but not in a good way.