Фрагменты (Fragments)

Temnozor's Fragments... demo, or experimental mini-album as the band calls it, recorded and released about three years after the band's debut album and re-released along with that same album as the Sorcery of Fragments compilation in 2003, is an odd little recording of folk music mixed with metal which lasts just over half an hour.

Musically this is semi-ambient folk music with some metal moments, not folk metal or anything of the sort. The metal part was undoubtedly not a priority for the band as it's quite sporadic throughout the overall mini-album, being most prominent on the second and longest song, Pagan Sunrises - The Faith of Fire. The intro is a short three-minute ambient piece based around synthesisers which builds up the Slavonic folkish atmosphere this mini-album is supposed to evoke. And it succeeds in evoking it very well throughout the whole thing, with many different elements brought together such as female chanting, clean vocals sung in Russian, samples of thunders, folk instruments such as flutes which would become a staple element in Temnozor's much from then on.

Pagan Sunrises - The Faith of Fire is the blueprint of the classic Temnozor song on the band's last two albums and probably further in the future as well. Mixing clean and growled vocals the band creates the folkish atmosphere which Temnozor is so well known for. The song itself is quite slow-paced, there are no fast sections at all and the drumming continues on for the whole length at varying speeds which never exceed a certain point. The guitars have a more supporting role than anything else, which is normal for this type of folk music where so many instruments are used. The base of all the songs comes from the folk instruments and the atmosphere they create. Some odd moments appear throughout this whole mini-album, such as parts of the vocals on the third track, Shine, Fire in the Night!, which sound nearly spoken yet partly shouted and this gives a strange effect, somewhat cheesy for the shouted words.

The whole mini-album's lyrics are in Russian so I unfortunately can't understand them right now but if they’re consistent with the band's other work they’re about either darkness, pagan gods (older material) or about the glorification of war and the white race which is a staple of the newer Temnozor. On the last point, the band is certainly NS and probably started expressing such feelings around the release of Fragments… or shortly after.

This mini-album is definitely worth hearing since what we have here is excellent folk music with some metal here and there so it's only for those who appreciate folk a lot and don’t mind the occasional odd or cheesy (due to the tone of the clean vocals) moment. This is undoubtedly easiest to get along with the band's first album on the Sorcery of Fragments compilation since the original recording is very hard to find.