| CD REVIEW Buicide |
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Band : Buicide With this Kolpino (a St. Peterburg suburb) based band, Casket Music now delivers historic material of another Russian act (the first...if I haven't missed anything...being Grenouer). Although Buicide only exists since 2004, the band's antecedents go back to the late '90s, when Beautiful Suicide came onto the St. Petersburg scene with a brutal Death Metal sound. The band played a lot of gigs, did some open air festivals, and recorded one album. Over the years the band's style changed towards a more technical and melodic one, and after a final line-up change in 2004 (which sees the current membership of the band fixed at singer/ guitarist Sergey Kuznetsov, guitarist Anton Veresov, bassist Kirill Kotov, and drummer Sergey Mareychev) the band transformed into a new unit with a shortened name. After only a couple of months the new band had enough new material and did its debut performance at the Rock Palace open air festival, alongside such bands as Abnormal, Boney Nem, Koma, Psilocybe Larvae, Resleep, and Tartharia. Towards the end of 2005 the guys retreated into St. Petersburg's Phantom Pain Studio with Igor Anochin to record the material for this, their debut album. Mixing was done by platinum selling producer Anssi Kippo in Finland's Astia Studio (which is really only a good 170 km in NW direction away from St. Petersburg). In Russia the album was of course released ages ago, and at the time it got favourable reviews with comparisons to the likes of Death, Atheist, Sadist, Pestilence, and Cynic. No clue? Expect nice intertwining double lead/ rhythm guitars, pounding bass and drums, and a singer whom scream his head off, rather than to grunt. There's an interesting thing about the fact that Ind from Grenouer contributes in the writing of the band's lyrics. During the recording of the album the guys also had some guest contributions with one Ashot (sorry, I wasn't able to find any additional info on that one) adding solo guitar to “Enthrallment” and the instrumental album closing “Outro”...Tartharia's Kirill Cult and Septima's Ilia Denisov bringing backing vocals to the song “Reincarnation”...the latter also adding keyboards to the album's title track (which also includes two passages played on...a balalaika guitar, I guess – the keyboard so obstructively atmospheric I missed it before I went to look for it) and closing instrumental (here the keyboard may also be atmospheric, but you can make it out very nicely in the calmer opening and ending). By the way, members of Buicide have been known to collaborate (as session, guest, or live musicians) with other bands in the genre: Tartharia, Grenouer, and Severnye Vrata. To get a whiff from this album, you can listen to the 2 songs posted at (www.) myspace.com/buicide. There's also a (live) video, but that track is not on the album. As you can guess, the guys have not been completely idle since having released their album some 5 years ago, and they should actually be hitting the studio again pretty soon. Meanwhile, the world outside Russia and its immediate area of influence can get acquainted with the band's stuff thanks to the good people at Casket Music/ Copro Records! Three hails and a cheer...and may they be able to continue their good work for many years to come! 95/100 Tony. |