With From The Dead Villages’ Darkness, Sivyj Yar bring ‘songs about those who have gone into oblivion, the memories of whom has been lost’.
This album is the second one in a triptych, successor of last year’s The Dawns Were Drifted As Before. Once again this project by a Russian guy called Vladimir focuses on Slavonic poetry, mythology and history, seen from a rather tragic point of view. Since I haven’t heard the first album (as a matter of fact, to be honest, I didn’t know this project either; shame on me!), I can’t compare with it. But anyway, From The Dead Villages’ Darkness lasts for thirty eight minutes and comes with fabulous artwork! The intro and outro are very short in length, the four ‘main’ songs last in between eight and ten minutes.
The album From The Dead Villages’ Darkness is quite impressive for having such full sound, and for bringing such firm, epic creations. About that sound, I can say that the production is of a very high quality. It maintains a specific rawness, which is needed for such material. Besides, all different pieces, coherently floating in perfect symbiosis (whether it deals with fast and paganized Black Metal stuff, or integer and neo-folksy excerpts with acoustic guitars or violin), are equally balanced in sound quality. The main parts are of the harsh kind, but that does not necessarily mean fast or furious. Actually, the main speed is slow to mid-tempo oriented, yet with quite some variation. That variation goes for the execution too, playfully acting in between victorious epic, melancholic soberness, technical progressivity and merciless malignancy.
There are quite some one-man projects around, and I can appreciate lots of them. Though I do not think it is that evident at all to compose and record a total album so organically as in Sivyj Yar’s case. It’s truly remarkable how evident is seems when you wrestle through From The Dead Villages’ Darkness. But in one way or another Vladimir did succeed to have this result sound so organic and cohesive, and that isn’t but appreciable. The best example I can give is Distant Haze Was Arising, a composition that contains so many levels, so many different aspects, yet packaged within one global visionary focus, a one-directional creation that comes close to perfection.
This is what I am going to do: 1) searching for the first part of this trilogy (I know a store in Brussels that might have this stuff, or I will ask my ‘regular’ disc-shop, Metal Zone, to order this stuff), and 2) impatiently waiting / craving for the third part of this conceptual triptych. And this is what you are going to do: 1) searching for the first part of this trilogy in case you might not have it, 2) searching for this second part of the trilogy, and 3) impatiently waiting / craving for the third part of this conceptual triptych.