Ведовством крепка чёрная слава Руси

Let’s give Temnozor’ credit for straightforwardly clearing out any ambiguity on their beliefs by directly claiming every subhuman spreading their music will be contributing to his own destruction – 14/88. All ideological divergence set aside, just for a while I fancied one of those Untermenschen downloading this little stuff known as Sorcery is Strengthening the Black Glory of Russia (Untermenschen never buy anything, by the way), skipping the ambient intro to debouch into the first song, already barely surviving the ear-scorching electric guitar when suddenly at 0:21 THE flute kicks in and he collapses – dead.

The flute, this indispensable addition to Temnozor’s music, this little hollow woodstick no one would have thought before it could conceal such terrifying powers. Even if it only appears on a mere couple of songs, the listener just can’t miss it. First it’s pretty characteristic, and anyone pretending the guy can’t play it properly... might be right after all, but the question is elsewhere. Second, it’s mixed so high when it’s present it overrides every other instrument, save the vocals. Alright, let’s put it clearly, ninety-five percent of demos around here benefit from a better sound than this (basement masterpieces of 14-years old BM kiddies don’t count). The piercing guitars usually end up in some amorphous static you’ll have to really dig into to eventually exhibit a semblance of shape, the keyboards are sometimes undermixed, sometimes overmixed – don’t look for any logic here; the drums are buried deep and the bass, believe it or not, may still be heard – casually.

This weak production really is a pity as the songwriting is otherwise particularly versatile, and THERE’S SOME OF THE BEST FOLK-BLACK METAL TO BE FOUND HERE... That is, when there is folk-black metal; because four of those tracks, in spite of some occasional as well as distant drums, are in fact pure keyboard-laden ambient. What may be understandable for the title track or Зимние Грезы which may be considered as respectively the general album intro and a short interlude, but is less for the much longer Князь Священного Безмолвия and У Талых Снегов Спроси Наши Имена. Oh, of course you may get some additional half-growled, half-spoken vocals on them... all of great interest to the listener who can’t understand Russian.

To come back to the folk-black moments saying they’re far more interesting is a euphemism. They’re indeed what make Temnozor’ an important name of the Russian Folk/Pagan scene in spite of their pretty narrow discography. Restricting the folk/traditional elements to the flute because it’s supposed to be the so-called folk instrument would be downright idiotic, as once the ambient tracks are ruled out it’s the whole release which shows an undeniable folk-ish vibe; the song probably embodying it the best, the majestic Дид-Дуб-Сноп, being ironically a song which does NOT feature the flute. It’s a shame Sorcery..., because of its extremely raw sound, is likely to appeal far more to people familiar with black metal than to the average folk-metaller as it is, songwriting-wise, a folk metal album, and a pretty original one.

As surprising as it may sound to the newcomer the music in itself is highly melodic; besides in spite of a few upbeat parts the overall tempo is pretty slow. Бъ Одън Народ Словънск and Дид-Дуб-Сноп are both as ample and ambitious as the thin production permit them to be; try to pay an attentive ear to the riffs as they’re numerous and most of them, for what you’ll be able to hear, are truly excellent. Прославление Павших and my personal favourite В Кронах Вековых Дубов both begin as soft, gentle ballads before speeding up and switching to a more aggressive sound though again, this still is hardly black metal. Масленица is more anecdotal, it’s basically a short instrumental reusing one of the multiple flute themes of Бъ Одън Народ Словънск to jam a bit around it. It has its own charm however, and the guy behind the flute probably had good fun.

The work on the voices has to be underlined as well. Granted, around half of them consist in standard but solid black-metallish shrieks which, fortunately, aren’t rendered too horrendous by the shrill production. There’s apparently another rather voiceless harsh vocalist who sometimes kicks in (e.g. around 1:50 on Бъ Одън Народ Словънск) for whatever reason and who wasn’t indispensable; but the most fascinating will probably remain the exalted clean chanting which is best heard on Дид-Дуб-Сноп or В Кронах Вековых Дубов, but is still present on pretty much every track. Whatever the guy is singing about (let’s bet... Slavic pride?) the least that can be said is he’s fully into it – if this isn’t called singing with passion, nothing will ever be. If his style reminds a bit of Fenriz on his Isengard project, let’s admit it’s much better done here.

It’s somehow sad to eventually grant this recording with only a lukewarm mark as it truly deserves some recognition amongst folk metal circles – not to say it’s unknown, far from it, but too often tagged as mere black metal. However first the production partially ruins the noteworthy songwriting and instrumentation; second sixteen minutes of ambient on a thirty-seven minutes long album is far too much, all the more as if you’ve got the version with the additional Fragments EP you’ll get another half-hour of the same – better produced though. Now if Sorcery... managed to forever change your regard on flutes, that’s already a point. Temnozor’ will do better later, anyway.

Highlights: Бъ Одън Народ Словънск, Дид-Дуб-Сноп, В Кронах Вековых Дубов

Temnozor. One of the best NSBM projects and this was their first full-length release and first with which I got into the band. It was recorded 10 years ago, when the black metal scene in Russia wasn’t developed. There weren’t many talented musicians with experience at that field, equipment was poor and that explains bad quality of production on the album. If they had made it in the year 2008, it could have been three times better.


Temnozor is a special band, it certainly isn’t usual. Screaming vocals, simple guitar riffs and folk flute elements make Temnozor one of the best. With all lyrics written in Russian, which are about Slavic/white pride and nature, and two singers, one with screaming and one with clear vocals, Temnozor is perfect. First song is lousy and it isn’t even a song, it is just screaming with some strange instrumental effects in the background. One will have a feeling that he is listening to a conversation between some creature and some warrior in the forest. There are three more songs made in vein of that one with some easy melodies and riffs in background, which more resemble to the real songs than the first one, and already mentioned conversation is held once again in those tracks. Those are excesses on the album and it would be much better without them. Four of them are little too much.


That is the one of the lacks of this recording, they should put more effort in creating the songs like “Dib-Dub Snop” and “Be oden narod…”. All other songs are great and real masterpieces, “Maslenitza” is, for example, one of the best black metal instrumentals ever written and it shows how genius are Temnozor members. A member who did session vocals for the album was just a session and by words of Gorruth (clear vocals and the leader of Temnozor) he is ‘a jerk’ and it could be seen that he doesn’t sing with all his soul like Gorruth does. If they had Kaldrad in his place at the beginning, I think that this album would be better. All in all this material is a masterpiece, all black metal fans must get known with Temnozor and this release because it is probably the best of what black metal can give to the scene.

After a somewhat embarrassing keyboard intro, we discover the first unfortunate downside of this demo; the production of the guitars. They are extremely high pitched, it seems that the lows and most of the mids have been eradicated from the guitars, but about half way through the first song you'll begin to stop noticing it. The flute and the keyboards make up for the mids and lows. After hearing the short bass interlude you will also start to wish the bass would be louder and with more mids. It is quite obvious that the bass player is very skilled.

Did-Dub-Snop starts quite well and has a very catchy folk riff. This is of course completely killed by the clean singing. Fortunately it does not last for long. This of course wouldn't have annoyed me so much if the vocalist wasn't so good at shrieking. The black metal shrieks on this demo are very good.

Winter Dreams is pretty pointless, just some slow keyboard crap and spoken word shit in Russian.

Maslenitsa is shockingly good. Pounding mid-paced The Clash riffs galore, with The Pogues-ish flute solos. It doesn't last long enough though, and there is no vocals, which is sad, because, as said before, the vocalist's shrieks are quite good, and this song would have been absolutely CLASSIC with some black metal shrieks.

MORE CLEAN SPOKEN WORD. Glorification of the Fallen has some good riffs, and again, would be much better with some GOD DAMN SHRIEKS instead of the 30 seconds of clean Russian garbage at the start.

Finally, some fucking shrieks. But no guitars? Their keyboardist isn't that bad really, but the bad sounds and no guitars do not do this song a favour.

Great, more Russian clean singing. I've been bagging the Russian clean singing quite alot havn't I? Well, I guess it's not that bad... But this demo would definitely be better without it. Atleast it doesn't last long before the guitars finally come back in, and so do the awesome shrieks. It's funny, the first time you hear the guitars you'll want them to go away, and by the time "The Wind is Dancing in the Crowns of Evil Oaks" starts, you'll be begging for them to come back. Overall, this track is one of the best on the demo, though it should've ended before the crap keyboards came back in.

Clean guitars, keyboards, slow tempo, it's just going to be a shitty basic outro right? It's actually not that bad, a quite good drone-ish song, and a great way to end the demo.

Well, this demo is pretty enjoyable once you've gotten past the bad guitar production, bad keyboard effects, clean Russian singing and lack of shrieks. You know, if all the songs were like Maslenitsa, this would be godly. The combination of ska punk riffs and flutes with black metal shrieks is a magnificent combination for amazing music. If only they HAD used black metal shrieks in that song, and if only they HAD made more songs like that.

Go to the website and download it if you're a lover of underground black metal.

The production on this album is, in a word: shrill. The music here is quite good, but some who would be interested in this music, might find it a challenge to get past the production.

There is a very bold flute in the front of the music. The guitars are very dirty, heavily distorted, and high pitched. The vocals go from singing Russian folk style, to your standard black metal screams, to absolutely lunatic shrieks that would make the criminally insane sit up at attention. These vocals of course seem to contrast with folky, at times punk-esque, and sometimes even very upbeat music, but it's not wholly unpleasant. Being that these vocals are so very passionate, it's sad that they're one of only two problems with the music - even if it is only in the production. They're too loud.

But again, I must stress the shrillness of the production, and I'm going to end by saying the worth of this album really depends on whether or not you can bear intensely high pitched production.