Although I love Romania as mystic country of mountains and deep forests, I have not listened to Bucovina until this new opus. The band has been in the scene since 2008 and they got their name after a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathians. This is their fifth full length opus, first in four years. This one offers ten songs of melodic and epic folk metal mixed with black and some little death metal influences. The guitar melodies are astonishing and fantastic leaving me with goosebumps all over my skin. Vocals vary from black screams, death metal growling and multiple clean vocal harmonies with such beautiful voice that reminds me a lot of Vintersorg. Lyrics are in Romanian language so I don’t really understand but let the music do the talking. What I understood from the translator and titles, it is about nature and Romanian folklore. This is album just made to listen multiple times on a winter’s day after or during the walk in the pine woods of our North under a steel grey sky.
This is a little bit older release but no matter. This is an e.p, by these UK legends of grindcore and hardcore punk in their earlier era. This one contains seven songs, two being covers of Bad Brains and Slab! songs. I love how this band progressed through decades from pure grindcore speed and d-beat parts to something more pumping, adrenaline and energy fueled beast, with groove parts and technically more challenging songs with many different parts. Barney’s singing is as strong as ever and my personal favorites on this one are Narcissus and By Proxy. There is a kind of almost industrial vibe to this e.p. and very gloomy and almost post apocalyptic atmosphere, so I love it even more. May they deliver many more and bring joy with their extreme grindcore metal.
From Upper Austria comes Todesschrei, with their first full length opus. This one contains eight songs with titles and lyrics in German language and the music of Todesschrei is basically a mixture of raw anguished black metal and slower more depressive black with songs such as Im Herbst meines Lebens, Der Tod ruft mich, Mein letzter Weg giving good picture what this opus is about. Production is old school, raw yet atmospheric with aggression giving enough place to melancholy and guitar melody possible only in black metal. Vocals are screaming and tortured but fit perfectly. My personal favorite of all eight songs is Dem Wahn verfallen which starts with wolf’s howl and wind and is the most atmospheric song and melancholic yet aggressive song on this record. This is a strong debut.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 