The title should be enough to tell you how I feel about Mrakobesie's album Zver'. This is a weird case since the band seem to be talented, just when they are covering other people's songs. On their own stuff, not so much. And that both confuses and upsets me, since hearing such a great cover of Matvey Blanter's famous Soviet war song "Katyusha" and another solid cover of the Red Army Cavalry March right before it really makes me question how all of the other songs on Zver' came about. Because for as much of a romp as the war songs are, the rest of the album is dishearteningly average without much of an identity of its own.
Zver' starts out with these original songs for the first six eighths of the album. What I can say about them is that most of them are passable, if nothing special and merely meet the mark without throwing in anything so much as a surprising riff, melody, shout, break, or atmosphere at all. Its regular black metal so regular that I can't even compare it to a genre standard like Transilvanian Hunger because it would make that album seem weak by comparison. Sure, there's some good darkness put on by the guitar tone, and the tremolos and shrieks are up to par, but there aren't really any ideas that make these songs really stand. Hell, a few of these tracks sound downright incompetent, with "Mertvyj Les" having some very badly-timed synth keys, and "Mechty Chernoj Svjatosti" being a dull, atonal crawl with squealing guitars peppered throughout. Fortunately, after that, the war songs come into play and your ragged spirit is lifted and filled with energy as these guys suddenly become something far more fun than just "another black metal band". You could almost picture yourself Cossack-dancing to these covers with how much fun they are, and you forget all the filler you just had to sit through.
Maybe these guys were still learning their instruments when this was made. Or maybe they are actually decent musicians, just not good songwriters, which probably explains the great covers, but blasé original songs. Either way, Zver' is an underwhelming album with a pair of jolly blackened gems at the end of it. These guys really could have taken their Soviet angle further and made some real kickass tunes just like these covers. If only they knew how to write their own material better.