Review Summary: Metal flowers with tender petals
It makes perfect sense that the most prominent Ukrainian Black Metal Bands hail from the west of Ukraine. If the ideal background for dark and heavy music exists anywhere in the world, it must be located somewhere around Lviv or Ternopil. The mountains, the forests, the legends of mavkas, chuhaisters, and other spirits of nature, the Gothic architecture of the cities. Add to that the inherent piousness and conservatism prevalent among the locals which can be truly suffocating sometimes and leaves you little choice: go mad or go metal.
But Kekht Arakh is from Mykolaiv, and that’s a different story altogether. Mykolaiv is a small industrial city in the south of Ukraine with old, dilapidated buildings and huge shipbuilding cranes towering over the quay. It doesn’t care how often you go to church. It likes beer, fish, and sunshine, and has very little to offer in terms of Black Metal inspiration. True, there’s the Black Sea not so far away, but the Black Sea is not really black. It’s blue and warm, and full of medusae. It has crowded beaches where overweight aunties timidly tap the water with their toes before slowly immersing their cellulitis into it. One might claim that the Black Sea is a poser but remember that it did not choose to be named Black. All things considered, if you live in Mykolaiv, you can’t count on the local environment or people around you to be your source of inspiration. You have to find Black Metal within yourself.
Even a cursory listen to “Night&Love” is enough to see that Dmytro Marchenko aka “Crying Orc” has ample reserves of Black Metal in his heart and mind. If you listen to his first two records back-to-back (which I did in reverse order), it becomes clear that he had the basic elements of his style figured out from the start. These include ferocious guitar riffage and relentless blast beats, as well as sneering, abrasive harsh vocals. The scratchy old-fashioned sound which makes you feel like you are listening to an old vinyl record from your father’s collection is also already established. Finally, even in its heaviest moments the album expresses its vulnerable and deeply personal nature through poetic lyrics and melodies lurking beyond the riffs.
Overall, the album clearly reflects at least two sides of Dmytro’s personality. There's a passionate metalhead who can’t get enough of blast beats, fast guitars, and corpsepaint, and then there is this sensitive guy who loves poetry, nature, and solitude. This should be a strong point for me, because I prefer my Black Metal mixed with something extra. But the strangest thing about this album is how Crying Orc insists on keeping these aspects of his personality firmly separated from each other. This album knows no middle ground: there are either full-throttle metal tracks moving on breakneck speed save for an occasional acoustic outro or the melancholic interludes full of mournful keyboard melodies and wistful guitars.
I do like most of the songs here, no matter what style they represent. Of the “pure” metal tracks I particularly enjoy “Primal Beauty of Silence,” which is especially unhinged, and “Down to the Depths of Inner Cold,” which is comparatively reserved. On the other hand, both “Night” and “Love” also succeed in combining subtle keyboards with sounds of cicadas and water currents, although I would say that clean singing of “Forever Night Castle of Love” or wordless vocalizations of the closer “And Never Ends (Eternal Love)” work better that the spoken word delivery of the two title tracks.
But this strict duality represents the main issue with the album for me. Crying Orc insists on treating the different sides of his music like oil and water, something that cannot be mixed and should always be kept apart. I guess the idea was for the softer instrumentals and interludes to provide a break from the Black Metal intensity, but as the dividing line is drawn so resolutely, the transition feels jarring, and the whole package comes off a bit uneven and imbalanced.
Then again, for those of you who like Black Metal in its purest form the heavy songs here might be especially enjoyable. For me though, the fact that Dmytro figured out how to merge his different styles by his next album makes “Pale Swordsman” a rather more fulfilling experience. Still, all the ingredients are already here, it just took some more time to learn how to mix them. After all, night and love belong together!
