When the domestic death / doom metal band Frailty released their third studio album, Ways Of The Dead, three years ago, it marked a change in the band’s sound – such a flow of traditional melancholic sounds (or, in the viewer’s opinion, music for vein-cutters). ”) Had been replaced by more aggressive, extreme and faster“ death ”and even“ black ”rhythms. Although the band’s fourth performance has returned to the “death / doom” trend, it is again slightly different from the original “Frailty” works. In addition, for the first time in the group’s career, the album was recorded exclusively in Latvian.
Commenting on this step, “Frailty” points out that such an idea has been around for a long time – the choice in favor of Latvian instead of the usual English for metal music “is related to the group’s desire to highlight their Latvian identity and talk about the traditional theme of their work in their native language.” The album “Dark Waters” contains seven compositions that “tell about dark forebodings, important and complex events in world history, inner experiences and existential fears, as well as touch on Latvian mythological ideas.” The thematic orientation is also very well reflected in the band’s latest video for the song “Es degu” (its author is the band’s guitarist Jēkabs Vilkārsis) – something so impressive has never been seen in Latvian heavy music. If there is no change in the composition of the group: Mārtiņš Lazdāns (vocals), Edmunds Vizla (guitar), Jēkabs Vilkārsis (guitar), Andris Začs (bass) and Lauris Polinskis (drums).
BY. Monumental. Impressive. Vareni. It seems that the very last word best describes Frailty’s latest work. It is possible that for many this album will remind them of the early works of Latvian “doom / death” leaders “Heaven Gray”, but – is it bad then ?! Take which song you want, it all sounds great – “Dark waters gloomily whisper in the twilight”, “I burn”, “Death is coming through the white snow”, “Lingerie” and others, but as no. 1 would like to highlight “So the light goes”, which again draws parallels with “Heaven Gray” at its best. Bigy’s irritated grizzly bear vocal, virtuoso guitarist tandem Vizla – Vilkārsis, Andra (he also made this recording in his studio) bass playing skills, one of the best Latvian metal drummers Lauris – even individually, only the best can be said about each of the musicians. The album is also released in CD format, which this time is important from the point of view that you can also read the lyrics of the disc booklet – Edmunds always creates them so well thought out that they need to be studied in depth, but it will be difficult without a speaker. Five stars out of five, the question of the best Latvian metal music album of 2020 is no longer relevant.
PRICE. Arguments against this album will definitely arise for the neighbors – it is not possible to listen to it at an acceptable volume, the “volume” button will ask for it after turning it to the maximum. Well, it is still possible to join the timing – compositions lasting eight to 10 minutes (there are more than half of them here), but it seems an exaggeration.
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