Horizontalios maldos palaima

I have to admit that this album has been one of the most difficult ones to me, not only to review but even to listen to and to fully understand. And the reason is simple: Pergalė's Horizontalios Maldos Palaima mixes loads of different genres into every single song, varying from black metal to depressive rock to (probably Lithuanian) folk music, to acoustic ambient and to punk of the most eclectic kind, with a relevant presence of the piano (every so often actually playing tunes which are not that related to the rest of the song!).

Six "real" tracks are featured on the full-length, since - no offense intended - the seventh one, "Sado Mazo Vokietija (McKaras Remix)", is a techno/electronic remix of the third track by some Lithuanian artist called McKaras: not that I hate electronic music, but this remix is actually utterly boring and useless. The true, non-remixed "Sado Mazo Vokietija", though, is the funniest track on the album: "Vokietija" happens to be the Lithuanian name for Germany, and the song itself is entirely sung in a hilarious mix of English and German. The track has a Rammstein-like industrial vibe, while some kind of happy keyboard (granted that they are really keyboards: you never know what to expect when it comes to Pergalė!) plays catchy melodies. Demonas' bass is truly great on the whole record, and even on this song it manages to take its predominant place under 7's raw vocals.

Changing genre and mood we have "The Addiction Song", which begins with a thrashy riff but is soon joined by a great, happy piano melody and by 7's slow, raw vocals. As I said before, even on this track the piano seems a little bit out of place, but it manages to create a greatly enjoyable feeling combined with a keyboard background effect in what could probably be called a refrain. The omnipresence of the piano gives to this track a fresh and happy feeling, and it's probably one of the most beautiful of the whole album. Uhm, actually.. it's not exactly ended here: Pergalė, as always, like to throw dozens of genres into their songs, so even in "The Addiction Song" we can hear a nice break, a Helloween-like electric guitar part and some quite strange upbeat guitar notes which accompany 7 while he literally says: "alcohol, cocaine, cannabis, nicotine, love, sex, fire or violence". Then a fast but extremely short black metal part and, finally, our familiar piano-dominated catchy song.

Yet another genre-shift and we have the entirely acoustic "Viskis", which starts with a calm acoustic guitar melody under vocalist 7's speech in some language I don't know (okay, yeah, it'll be for sure Lithuanian!). Other background effects join the crescendo (anyone remembers Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells"? Eh.. quite a similar idea!), then the atmosphere gets low again, acoustic guitar and piano plus 7's speech.. and restarts its crescendo, with more importance to the piano in the last minutes of the song. In the end, it sucks not being able to understand a single word of this five-minutes long speech, but the track itself is quite relaxing and it's a nice musical experimentation for sure.

Okay, I am stopping here: it took me even too much lines to describe three of the six tracks featured on Horizontalios Maldos Palaima, and I won't annoy the reader much longer.

"Horizontalios Maldos Palaima" is the longest track of the lot, and it presents changes of tempo and genres (many!), 7's always enjoyable raw black metal voice (a little bit versed into the symphonic kind of black metal), a great fast black metal part and a weird, long acoustic quasi-folk intermezzo that grows into electric, another black metal part.. and we have also the opportunity to hear an epic chorus in the end! "Viešnamio Harmonija" is quite catchy, we always have lots of keyboards and the usual changes of genre and tempo, into percussion and bass solos, things like that. The opener "Aš Tave Subadysiu" is quite similar: piano melodies under distorted guitars, 7's harsh voice which become a scream and then imitates Attila Csihar's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas one, and finally a quite off-pitch folk ending.

So.. what to say?! While writing my reviews I always hope not to bore to hell the reader, but in this case I swear that I did my best. Pergalė's debut album Horizontalios Maldos Palaima is truly an extremely strange, eclectic and experimental record. Anyways it could have many different listeners, for some reasons. It is, overall, played and written very well, the bass and the keyboards are great and so are 7's vocals, which change a lot throughout the whole album. And, as I said, the songs are all interesting, well-composed and diverse, one song to each other but even one song into itself, since Pergalė love to insert many different genres into every single track. I think that Horizontalios Maldos Palaima could surely be enjoyed by those who are into all of those subgenres of black metal which are not the "true"/"pure" one, so listeners of Lifelover, Shining, Austere (and all the other projects of D., Sorrow and Desolate, i.e.: Woods of Desolation, Germ, Grey Waters etc.) and, in general, of the "strange" (black) metal bands which love to innovate and which always try new approaches to the music.. yes, all of those who listen to bands like these will surely, at least, enjoy Pergalė's musical proposal, if not love it madly. On the other hand, the full-length itself is quite difficult because of the issues I just described, so one that is not into these kind of experimental music (or, simply, a pure blackster) would probably get bored (or angry) while listening to Horizontalios Maldos Palaima. In my opinion, it's a really interesting and enjoyable experiment, and it deserves a listen from everyone.