Tuesday 5 April 2016

Grey Heaven Falls - Black Wisdom

GREY HEAVEN FALLS - Black Wisdom (Aesthetics of Devastation CD 2015)
Another Russian band has been introduced to me and damn, Grey Heaven Falls is a super sensation in my opinion. Although “Black Wisdom” is their second album, they’re completely anonymous to me, I have not heard of them ever before nor any of the stuff they released prior to this new opus. But damn, I am so fuckin’ happy that Aesthetics of Devastation sent a copy to me, I could now enjoy one of the best black metal releases I heard in long time. And I say so with all responsibility and honest words. Because this is just excellent stuff.
Grey Heaven Falls combines black and death metal, even adds some spontaneous traces of calmer, more atmospheric, almost doomy fragments, all glued in exceptional and hugely inspiring and intriguing form. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in each song from “Black Wisdom”, and my feelings towards the whole music are similar to what I felt, when I played amazing debut album from Maïeutiste. Both bands actually have quite much in common, surely both try to come up with more sophisticated kind of black metal and both are just damn awesome in my opinion. I just love the way Grey Heaven Falls arrange their music, coming up with some of the most diverse stuff, which still sounds solid and not freaking weird. The reason is that they kept the fundamental, traditional ingredients of black metal, with its cold, eerie and sinister aura, but they’re not afraid to have some more progressive influences – which are incorporated with use of guitars and drums only, no keyboards or other additional instruments was needed here. Maybe this is also why they seem to have kind of post black metal feel here and there, especially in long instrumental passages, when the music calms down and have this hypnotizing feeling of the post metal genre. But the aggression and viciousness are still there, their songs are long, so they can take you from fast, ferocious black metal to melodic, slow piece, or at one point even to long dark ambient piece (“Sanctuary of Cut Tongues”), which kind of divides the album into two parts. No matter what Grey Heaven Falls do, it always work fantastically well. And they did have to try to do their best, if the length of some songs reaches almost twelve minutes.
Such “Spirit of Oppression” is among the finest examples of how impressive the music of this band can be, with superb quality of composition and with both intensity of some blasting parts and hypnotizing beauty of the other. It’s very dynamic, never crossing the line of boredom and also never becoming irritating, so the pleasure of listening to “Black Wisdom” is full. And you know what? I could probably describe each song separately here, writing about how they develop, how the tension is built or whatever, but I guess this would be just waste of time. You must hear this and decide if you like it or not.
I am fully impressed. “Black Wisdom” is top quality stuff and I can speak of this album only in positive manner. The performance, compositions, arrangements, finally the production – all are excellent. And the lyrics also! I think there are Russian and English versions of the album, which is good, as with English translations we can read some damn good lyrics here. Get one for yourself then, do not hesitate.
Standout tracks: “Spirit of Oppression”, “That Nail in a Heart”

Final rate: 85/100

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