Adliga - Vobrazy (2021)

Country: Belarus
Style: Post-Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Nov 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | VK | YouTube

I've only reviewed a couple of albums from Belarus before, Belle Morte a mere couple of months ago, but here's another one, thanks to guitarist Ignat Pomazkov who kindly sent me a copy. It's an interesting album, one that, quite frankly, I wasn't ready for. I knew that I was into this on the first listen, but it's a post-metal album with a particular focus on doom, which is a combo that I'm sure I've never heard before. Metal Archives lists Adliga as one of only 85 groups who play doom/post-metal around the globe and they're the first one that I've listened to.

What I expect from doom is a slow pace and a heavy sound. I've heard all sorts of guitar tones and vocal styles within that basic framework, but doom has to be slow and heavy. This album is both in its way, but deceptively so. It never really speeds up, but it doesn't always feel slow. And it's heavy while often seeming to be not particularly heavy. I've had this on repeat for the whole day and it's told me that it's accessible music, even if it isn't remotely mainstream; and that it's not the doom metal that I know and not really the post-metal I know either.

I found myself going through an odd loop. The second song, Naščadkam, begins crushingly heavy, with a harsh male voice and an enticing female shout over slow beats and deep guitar. Of course, this is heavy stuff! How else could we hear this? But if this is heavy stuff, why didn't I feel that way on the opener, Apošni raz? So I went back to that and it's suddenly heavy too, especially late on and if not remotely as heavy as Naščadkam, but only because I'm thinking of it from that perspective. It feels odd.

What I ended up realising is that this cycles through three different genres and these three don't always mix. Sometimes it's doom metal and only doom metal, like that first minute of Naščadkam which verges on death/doom and the sections of that song that revisit that approach. It's brutally heavy stuff, with a recognisable clean doom metal guitar. Katja Sidelova's shouts are extreme but never seem to have come from hardcore. She endows them with real emotion and we can't escape the power. I usually hate shouted vocals but I simply adore these, especially in a conversation with the harsh male vocal of Uladzimir Burylau.

Sometimes it's post-metal and only post-metal, as perhaps best depicted in Paparać Kvietka. Sure, it's still slow and dark but I wouldn't call this doom in the slightest. It's experimental, with a vocal that begins with spoken word and gradually escalates as the song runs on, and with instrumental backing to match. My thoughts here were of bands like the Swans and others that I think of with a label like alternative slapped on them, albeit not the sort of alternative that gets played on radio stations across America.

And, sometimes it's both post-metal and doom metal at the same time, but not too often. What I think caught me out is that I tried to imagine what the two genres would sound like combined and this rarely does that. Instead, the band weave back and forth between post- and doom without us really acknowledging when that happens. That makes the album feel something like a magic trick but a really enjoyable one.

It also makes it hard to choose a favourite song because so much of the album plays not as a set of individual tracks but as a single piece of music, something new and enticing that we haven't heard before. I'm impressed by the band's sound and how heavy it gets while staying so clean. Maybe I'd plump for Naščadkam and Žyvy, because they effortlessly combine all three of those approaches.

The band here are always interesting and I'd happily listen to this in entirely instrumental form. It never falls into the background because, even though there are points where the guitars are just playing riffs, there's always development going on, whichever song I'm on building and becoming and evolving. And that goes for whichever instrument you want to focus your ears onto.

However, I have to call out the vocals as a real highlight. Sidelova's voice is versatile, shifting from a clean and melodic style to those emphatic shouts, without ever losing power. Burylau's voice is a supporting one, not used remotely as much, but he has a warm growl that fits alongside whatever Sidelova is doing at the time. I found myself eventually pressing stop after my ninth or tenth time through the album just so I could wander over to YouTube and see Žyvy being performed.

Now, what else is going on musically in Belarus?

Belle Morte - Crime of Passion (2021)

Country: Belarus
Style: Symphonic Gothic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 25 Jun 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | VK | YouTube

It seems that Belle Morte isn't only the name of a symphonic gothic metal band from Minsk, it's also the stage name of its lead singer, who writes the lyrics and music too. Now, she certainly isn't the only musician here, because My Little Demon is a duet with a male voice, but I can't find anything to detail who else is here.

Metal Archives only lists Belle herself, but she's not alone in the band photo. Looking at the Belle Morte website, I find pictures of two people, five people and six people, along with a note that she's collaborated with the Norwegian melodic death metal band Addendum, which is a one man project. So, I have no idea who's on this, but I'm guessing that it's the lady known as Belle Morte and a gentleman called Priest who is also Addendum.

[Note: Belle kindly let me know that this started as a two piece studio project but is now a six piece band. As suggested, she's the vocalist and songwriter and the rest of the band is as follows: Ilya Rogovoy and Ilya Petrashkevich on guitars, Sergey Butovsky on bass and backing vocals (that's him on My Little Demon), Rostislav Golubnichiy on drums and Maria Shumanskaya on keyboards. Butovsky is also the producer. Thanks, Belle!]

From that rich cello and flute in the introductory piece, we know that this is going to be dramatic. Yes, it has a very similar sweeping refrain to Adele's theme for Skyfall, but it rolls neatly into the opening song proper, Who are You, which is at once heavy and delicate, that neat balancing act that's up there with my primary reasons for listening to gothic metal. It's a good opener and If Only You Knew isn't a bad follow up, a little more modern and a little more industrial, but To Get Her is easily the standout here and Belle clearly knows that because there's an acoustic version of it included at the end of the album.

Circumstances have led to me listening to this over and over for a couple of weeks, as I get other work done that's prevented me knocking album reviews out, and, every single time I enjoy this album just a little more, but To Get Her always stands out from everything else. Mostly it's the vocal line, but it's a peach of a track from an instrumental standpoint too. It's notable to me that it's just as effective in a bonus acoustic form, something that rarely happens. The piano and violin stand out nicely in this take and a male counterpart behind Belle's voice works too.

I should add that other songs do get close, especially in the middle of the album. I love how the music escalates at the beginning of Beauty and the Beast and that whole song has a wonderful flow to it. My Broken Things is an elegant dance of a track. It felt strange sitting still in a chair, because it felt like I was being whirled around a dancefloor at a gothic ball, a memorable experience given a few shifts in tempo. Beauty Meant to Kill plays out like a mediaeval folk song. Also, the closer, My Legacy, may well be the catchiest number here, just to take us home right.

I liked this on a first listen, but it didn't really pop for me until a second time through. Over two more weeks, it's improved a little more without becoming an undying favourite. However, I can't underline enough how rare it is for me to be able to listen to an album, any album, this much without it tiring on me at some point. This works as an album to dive into and actively explore, but it also works in passive mode, as background. That's another reason it took me so long to write this one up, because it turned into an old friend and it's always hard to stay objective at that point. Let's just say it's one of the good ones, whoever's playing on it.

Detroit Hills - Discovery (2019)

Country: Belarus
Style: Post-Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Aug 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | YouTube

You might look at the cover of this album and make a relatively safe guess at what lies within. If you had no other information to go on, you'd likely be wrong. This is a post-rock album, a short one too at a few minutes shy of half an hour, but it's not from the urban sprawl of south eastern Michigan; it's from a city called Navapolatsk or Navapolotsk, depending on where you see it written, in Belarus. The musicians aren't white suburbanites, they're White Russians. And I'm guessing they're not anthropomorphic animals, as the cover suggests.

I'm not seeing any breakdown of band members, but I do see a suggestion that they used to be a four piece band that wasentirely instrumental. That's not the case any more, as there are vocals on every track here. I don't know if one of those four members stepped up to the mike or if they hired a singer but the songs are driven by the vocals and don't feel like they would work anywhere near as well without them, at least not early on.

They're deceptively light, because this is bright and cheerful melodic music but with depth if you're willing to dip below the surface. Memories, as an example, feels like a Joy Division song as covered by U2, as if a thoughtful and introspective piece was rendered cheerful with bounce and jangles. State of Mind has a relatively standard alternative rock vocal but the music feels ethnic, as if there were reggae musicians adding their flavour.

It also gets heavier, which is an interesting sound for music this vibrant, and The Rustle of Morning Stars follows suit. This isn't metal by any means, but there's a density to the sound that goes beyond anything U2 have done to become almost a soundscape. It's these songs that bring back that thought of instrumental music. Without vocals, these two would be even more immersive than they are already. It would be easy to get lost in them. Certainly, this album runs short but feels shorter because we get caught up in it and lose track of time.

The closest we get to an instrumental is Into the Light, because the regular song ends three and a half minutes in, consistent with the other five tracks on offer, but it carries on in a different vein and it's fascinating. There have been progressive elements throughout, especially on Open, but this adds ambient and glitch electronica to the mix, which was surprising given what's before it, but it's welcome even if I'm not sure how well four minutes of it at the very end of the album affects its balance.

I like this music. It's a palate cleanser and I found running through it on repeat a very pleasant experience. I felt better (and I wasn't feeling bad) but I also found myself finding odd little touches in this song or that that I'd missed on a first time through. I can see coming back to this reasonably often, especially The Rustle of Morning Stars, which gets better every time I hear it. The way the vocals layer is a joy.

And, on a wider level, so is this album. I just wish there was more of it as it's over far too quickly. I see two previous releases, but they're short. Memory, released back in 2016, looks like a single with only two songs plus a forty-four second interlude between them. Delight, from 2015, on the other hand, is a full album and one that, with ten songs, is longer than this. I definitely need to track them both down.

And that just leaves one question. Why would a band from Navapolatsk decide to call themselves Detroit Hills? Inquiring minds want to know.