Symphony of Depression

Just passing through here, have never stopped intentionally at this station… I mean, it’s depressing, for crying out loud! Not so much music-wise, though, although I couldn’t quite stomach the band’s few endeavours before that one, the guys running on the chosen modern thrash path, but trying too many tricks along the way, with core, groove and plain rock scattered around, creating a vast but ultimately disparate picture which makes one wonder whether this all is intentional, or is a product of a not very deliberately drawn trajectory.

We bump into another example of musical diversity, with modern thrash still serving as a base, but the corrosion caused by the digressive condiments is kind of bigger, if we exclude the pleasant operatic keyboard motif that has been introduced on some of the compositions, including on the all-out moshing opener “New World Disorder”, a truly vigorous beginning which still finds its matches later, the lively thrash/crossover joy “Suicide on the Battlefield”, and the raging Slayer-esque closer “Buried Alive“. The thing is that the remainder can hardly be labelled as thrash as the band take liberties with the romantic balladic side of the spectre (“Poteryanny vo Vremeni”, “Skazhi Mne Pravdy”), their idyllic predilections also finding an all-instrumental expression (“Skaji Mne Pravdu”), the sinister pounding power/thrasher “Pozyciya Nesoglasiya” dispersing the gathering romanticism, but such courage hasn’t been summoned elsewhere, the guys overtly playing with possibilities outside the thrash metal roster.

Whatever works for them, one can’t blame them for spreading their wings more widely, but said spreading doesn’t quite bring the band to a higher pedestal. Although the delivery is decidedly more homogenous than the one from the preceding two outings, it fails to convince that the musicians are on the way to hitting a peak creativity-wise. Multi-stylistic gatherings of the kind have long since stopped being a novelty, and there are certainly fans out there who would make more sense out of the next-in-line one… served with bouts of depression, though…

oh, and with quite a varied performance behind the mike as well, the man stretching himself all over the vocal gamut, semi-shouting with vociferous hardcore panache, getting passionate on the lighter material, rending his throat in a scary deathly manner on the mentioned Slayer-esque rager… boredom can’t get instilled here… and, quite honestly, I don’t see too many depressed faces in the audience, either… so maybe there's a cure, after all; let’s keep eyes and ears open. And let’s start passing through here with a purpose.