Country of origin:Russia

Location:Moscow

Status:Active

Formed in:2009

Genre:Atmospheric Black Metal/Ambient

Lyrical themes:Nature, Death

Current label:Unsigned/independent

Appropriately for an act with a name like Melankoli, the debut release is, as it says on the tin, an ode to death and a not very cheerful one at that. The song sweeps into view with drone synth wash, a little on the wistful, regretful side, and a mournful mood quickly (maybe a bit too quickly - it should take a while for melancholy to properly establish its presence or the listener starts to think the music is piling on the emotion too much too soon) descends upon us. Tinny machine drumming and fuzz guitar follow in quick order and the screaming, harsh and pained, starts.

The lyrics, delivered by both grim BM vocal and a clean youthful voice counterpart, describe an eager embrace of oblivion after a lifetime of suffering and fear of the unknown. The music, more synth-mediated ambient sorrow than BM-generated, echoes the pain and anguish of living in despair and lack of hope. The black metal element is felt more than heard, though in some of the quieter passages the thrumming of fuzzy guitar textures is a constant presence.

Most of the instrumentation concentrates on building up an atmosphere of longing for the release that death brings and the emotion can be quite intense. The track is not bad overall but it could have been improved with less reliance on synthesisers and more attention to the noise-guitar textures; the feel is a bit too smooth for a song that's supposed to be very world-weary and fed up with the drudgery of living an empty life. A clearer production with a sharper edge to the music wouldn't go astray here.

The shoegazer bit that comes halfway in the song seems derivative - that Alcest fella Neige will soon have to answer for a great deal!

There's enough variety in the music with post-metal and part-acoustic elements and melodic sections to maintain listener attention to the abrupt end. A very nice piece but probably not really worth getting on its own; the song has been included on a 2010 demo compilation so people should look for that release instead.

With a name like Melankoli, this Moscow-based act is surely committed to making morose depressive ambient BM until kingdom come. This EP at least gets him out of his starting blocks and running. The title track "Veter" ("Wind" in English) is an unfailingly beautiful piece brimming over with sorrow and powerful music. Sure, it's repetitive throughout but it's what the Melankoli man Unknown (yep, that's his name, folks) does with the looping riffs and the devils he inserts into the details as the track proceeds that makes all the difference. It starts with a blowingly cold atmosphere, overhead ambient wash suggesting the deepest black night with sparkling pin-pricks of stars and a field recording of someone trudging in open snowy country. Light piano gallop, synthesiser sparkle and wonder and pounding percussion lead a spoken vocal into blizzards of churning buzz guitar and wolf howl. The music quickly reaches high tension and screeching anguish as the protagonist in the song confronts oncoming death.

The pace is steady but relentless and Melankoli keeps listeners spellbound with each additional instrumental variation on the riffs and melodies employed. Episodes of post-rock, lead guitar soloing and screams of pain and despair alternate with moments of cold freezing stillness in which the shadow of death closes in more oppressively. The second half of the track grows increasingly unbearable as the icy surroundings and the ravenous wolves circle the protagonist and draw ever closer, smelling blood and sensing that their prey can offer no resistance. The music becomes sadder and more resigned as the end approaches and develops into a slow, sluggish lament.

A short bonus track "Сквозь сияние звезд" (English: "Through radiant stars") seems quite elegiac but adds very little to the main piece: there is much the same cold, glittering atmosphere and the wintry soundscape with its dark night and snowy breath remains unchanged. The drumming has a heavy pounding sound which in this footnoting track seems out of place.

The EP could have been edited for length and made a bit tighter so it sounds a bit less repetitive and over-straining its point. But then the problem comes in knowing which parts of a track like "Veter" should be edited and you realise that for all the time it might take to make its stand or labour over it, subtracting even just a small part will diminish it somewhat. It's not so much the details that we should judge the music but the intangible aspects of it that we are really interested in. It describes a downward spiral from life to death, and though we know from the outset that death is a certainty, we can choose either to resign ourselves and accept our fate, retreat in fear and sink into hopelessness, or determine to live what life we have to the utmost. "Veter" partakes of each of these alternatives and achieves a majesty as a result.

After reviewing the earlier "Veter" EP elsewhere on MA, I needed another excuse to listen to it again and fortunately Melankoli's follow-up release and full-length debut provided such an excuse. The track takes up just under half of the album's playing time and the entire recording becomes an extended single with several B-side songs. Still this is an enjoyable way to spend about 43 minutes listening to music late at night when your subconscious is beginning to reign supreme.

Hearing "Veter" (English: "Wind") again, I'm immediately plunged in its cold snowy soundscapes with the clear dark night-sky twinkling with diamond-cold stars and the thrill of knowing once again that wolves in the far-off distance are encroaching ever closer to the protagonist in the song. The feeling of life on a knife edge, poised between a temporary stay of danger and the everlasting blackness of death, is acute as never before. Despair, a hopeless mood and anguish are palpable in every note and every cold smooth tone throughout the track. A mood of intense sadness stays with this listener as the hunted prey meets his kismet and the track plays out a mournful coda with emphatic slab-hard drum beats and trumpet-like guitar riffs that turn into an extended dirge.

After "Veter", some listeners may think that's enough and the rest of the album is surely a footnote but there are some lovely if not very original soundscapes to be found. "Embrace of Winter" combines more of that ethereal deep-silent-snow-night atmosphere with scathing black metal guitar texture for an almost overwhelming stage of a bitterly cold universe in which blackness reigns forever and there is only the soundtrack of anguished phantom cries of those who have crossed over from life into the endless yawn of oblivion. "Coma", the only other track that features lyrics besides "Veter", drops us into shoegazer BM territory with a combination of clean youthful vocal and distant grim cries; the soughing synth wash and sections of dreamy guitar strumming contrast with rugged guitar rhythms and droning BM noise textures. "Through the Shining Stars" which was included on the original EP now comes across as a soothing instrumental filler piece that provides some restful breathing space between tracks but no more.

This is a beautiful work of immersive atmospheric black metal soundscapes: an ideal background to dreams of other worlds and contemplating the infinity of the cosmos and one's place and purpose in it. There is not much that I would prefer to be different though the ambient synth-generated elements are sounds that we've all heard before, done to death on other ambient depressive BM records, flat and inflexible in tone as ever they were. While this debut is quite solid in musical and compositional skill, there isn't much to distinguish Melankoli from other bands in his chosen genre and on future releases he will need to have a more distinctive sound and style.

After a hiatus spanning nearly 4 years, Russia's Melankoli comes back with a short EP "Fallen" which is more like a single with a short instrumental B-Side. As it is, "Fallen" is a very intense and powerful little package of sorrowing raw depressive BM. In just under a minute, Melankoli's sole member Unknown (well, it's better than merely being unknown) leaps from heavy despondent drone ambience to bleak howling tremolo guitar roar and tormented screaming. Main piece "Fallen I" features nearly everything a despairing depressive BM song needs in 7 minutes: an atmosphere of dread, isolation, hopelessness and desperation; a mix of clean, almost operatic and near-rasping vocals spanning a range of negative emotions and hysterical states; and a soundscape that scales heights of fear and irrationality, and depths of unease and foreboding, with moments of defiance and rage in-between. The singing may be a bit too theatrical in parts but on the whole this song is heartfelt and impassioned.

Though the shorter track, "Fallen II" might be the better of the two for the powerful emotions it evokes in the low, seething drones that emanate from the depths of whatever imaginary worlds Melankoli's Unknown has divined. Guitar feedback introduces feelings of alienation and alone-ness in a bleak soundscape of never-ending night and always-falling snow. If ever a song or an instrumental piece demonstrated the effectiveness of reverb as a music or atmospheric effect in its own right, this short track is it.

I only wish Unknown could have made much more of both these tracks, especially "Fallen II", as the emotions and vivid imagery made manifest here deserve more time for a full realisation of what is promised here. It seems a pity that the worlds revealed in these two tracks are reduced to small glimpses. But I suppose after almost 4 years of being away from Melankoli, during which time he must have been busy with other things (among them a space-oriented side solo amibent BM project called The Lost Sun), Unknown needs to re-enter the Melankoli universe on his own terms, bit by bit, frustrating though his method may be for us.