Epitimia – Нить (Thread)
3 min read
Band: Epitimia
Title: Нить (Thread)
Label: Naturmacht Productions
Release Date: 18 January 2018
Country: Russia
Format Reviewed: High quality digital promo
The Russian EPITIMIA was founded exactly eleven years ago by A. and K. for an experimental acoustic guitar track. Later the duo decided to go into dark realms of the black. M. joined, first as vocalist in the split demo with GMORK, but later as a drummer and playing violin. This way the trio from Saint Petersburg began its grandeur creative mix of atmospheric black metal, post-black, post-rock and even black gaze.
The name “Epitimia” comes from Greek and literally means “penance”. However, it was stated that for the band members the meaning of epitimia “is an individualistic way to control the human spirit through self-improvement and self-contemplation.” This contemplation easily can be felt in the music of the band, which constantly sought better grounds through all these years, delivering progression and a look towards the inner worlds on person’s nature. Simply because you cannot stand equal to the tunes band offer. It is a world full of sorrowful dreams, grey landscapes of mist and solitude, so much grief and painful fire in heart. Written in Russian, the K.’s lyrics are beautiful, poetic, suggesting just all the above mentioned romantic desperation and helplessness of the impossible daydream, turning this into unbearable burden. It is a “critical point of madness, spitting on the righteous way…”*. I would recommend to all our readers who can read and speak Russian to check the lyrics and find out all these inner struggles, gorgeously described into a state of melancholy, pain, hidden anger and sorrow at the same time.
Всё потеряно…
Меланхолия проникает в умы,
Вынуждая острым лезвием,
Уродовать свои молодые черты.**
Now “Нить” (Thread) is the fifth and long-awaited full-length album of EPITIMIA. It is coming after the 2014 “(Un)Reality” and it delivers further development into bands approach for the music and sound, but still keeping that so typical tremolos, dark and acoustic passages and of course desperate nuances. Another recommendation – make sure to listen to the record alone, at a good stereo, in order to dive into it, to catch all the details and twists and turns of the music, to get behind it and come one with the melancholy it brings. The album is complex, it requires solid attention and an appropriate mood. It Just because the atmosphere suggest it. It is again in the field of atmospheric black and post-black, with lots of acoustic atmo- parts to make the world around you lonelier.
“Нить” contains five tracks, and besides the “Вступление” (a misty accoustic Introduction), all the other songs are 9 to 12 minutes long, giving the album a 50 minutes total running time of lonely grey. Even the details on the cover art provide the grotesque, the overtaking grin of the Life over the small man’s feelings… “Падение” (Downfall), “Немощь” (Weakness; translated as “Infirmity” for the album), “Юдоль” (Vale; translated as “Vale of Tears”) and “Древо” (The Tree), describe all the inner experiences of a lost wandering soul, under the burden of unbearable reality. The tracks are deep and contain all the time two sides – absolute dark side and (potential) light side, as an ephemeral blink, a hope tearing for a second the heart and the mind, but suddenly everything drowns in darkness again. And there is no exit from this. Go and discover yourself – one listen is not enough. Go back to “Нить” at least several times; you might surprise yourself. 8/10 Count Vlad
* lyrics taken from the track “Epikrisis III –Megalomania” out of “Faces of Insanity” 2012 album
**lyrics taken from the track “Delusion III – Frustration” out of “(Un)Reality” 2014 album
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