Odpadní galerie

By that I mean they've gone stingy on the Plamenu elements I've come to expect. Stiny are a weird-ass Czech black metal band. This is what weird-ass Czech black metal sounds like: grating blackish vocals that reflect the bleakness of mined-out lands, percussion that's odd in both sound and patterns; and a guitar voice straddling professional 1349-type heaviness and east European piercing buzz, through riffs totally alien to either style.

That's not what we're getting here, most of the time. Well the vocals sound as detached and inhuman as always, it's just a shame there aren't fittingly unique songs that back the singer up with any consistent atmosphere. The first half is competent, but disappointingly dime-a-dozen style black metal, with peeks of Stiny Plamenu's more outlandish trademarks scattered around almost as an afterthought. I mean, it's fine stuff, but not what I came here to see. The atmosphere is just lacking that extra something, apart from when they try to squidgeon it in there and it comes off as a half-hearted pale imitation of itself. They're guilty of that cynicism right from the start. Sure the opener has that inhumanely sterile urban decay sound these Czechs have made their own. But any halfass band can sample some weird noise and presto! an easy-bake mood building intro.

The most innovative thing they come up with early on is some female vocals every now and then. She's good in "Pad", bringing the song a nice eerie vibe, and again creepily enjoyable in "Po Pulnoci"; but this haunting quality slips into annoying plaintive territory when matched with the slow, draggy tune of "Dolu Za Zuradla". That song best typifies the problems of the album's first half. It's okay, its central riff is almost memorable in that black metal hypnotic sense. But it's just unimaginative grim-primitive stuff that you could hear from any of 36,000 bands named something like Satanic Goat Rapist.

The back half tries to recapture the coldly unpredictable style that Stiny Plamenu have worked to perfection before. Here though, long mind-warpy riffs that really go somewhere in unexpected ways, devolve into long aimless nothings that just leave you lost. "Prichod Rady Lindleye" is the worst offender here. This wandering melody just feels like they couldn't figure out how to write an ending to it, far from using length properly to evoke a feeling of epic depth. Then there's a refreshing stop-start passage midway through that could have livened things up. Even the pedestrian drums throw in some eyebrow-raising rolls and fills around this cool avant garde-thrashy line. But they kill it by playing this way for most of the rest of the song! This bit was suited as a transition phase to something else, not a verse structure of its own.This song reflects the album as a whole: worthwhile ideas are there, albeit in short supply and buried among a bunch of skippable stuff.

Drums are sadly uninteresting throughout the whole album. These guys used to have a drum sound comparable to walloping on leftover pipefitters' equipment, played with odd time rhythms to support the strange riffs. Here, they're pretty unremarkable black metal drums. Blast beats make their appearance exactly where you'd expect, see "Nejhlubsi Patro". On the very first listen, you can already snap your fingers right at 2:40 to say 'insert blasting here.' Apart from one nearly redemptive exception, which I touched on earlier, the drums on "Odpadni Galerie" either poke around with average beats under average riffs, or waddle incoherently under the failed attempts at long creative riffs.

If you didn't already know and like Stiny Plamenu for other reasons, you might think more highly of this album as some mildly unusual black metal. For their fans though, "Odpadni Galerie" is just not awful.