Band: PLEMYA
Country: Belarus
Title: Enuma Elis
Label: Soundage Records
Year: 2017
Style: Experimental Folk Metal
Review:
The Belarusian band Plemya played in Poland during one of the cyclical concerts of "Folk Metal Night" some time ago and brought with it the debut album "Enuma Eliš". Perhaps the gods just wanted to, because its content is amazing! The band combined industrial metal sound with the archaic tribal power of trance-ritual music with the 21st century, post-industrial sound. A simple, archaic telenka, crossed with the heavily seasoned dark electronics of riff playing and rhythmic tribal dances is the quintessence of the sound of this album! Growing vocals, metalcore fusion with a progressive chisel and "trance drums and flares" coming out from under the sound wall - it reminds a little of the climate of the Croatian Manntra or the Romanian E-An-Na - but here in a slightly different way. More dark, more feral, more subdued by this archaic, untamed wildness. Formally signed as "experimental folkmetal" they reach musically far beyond the classical folkmetal and efficiently rub against the exotic border between neopaganism and post-industrial and stream-punk stylistics. This is also the stage image of the group - the characters from the film "Predator" resemble characters from anime and cyber-tribal dance styles. The whole of Belarussian lyrics adds extraordinaryness to this music. In this way, Plemu very interestingly combines tradition with industrial reality, in the mood of electronic darkness there is a lot of freshness taken from nature, like crystalline water appearing in the form of a spring in the underground of mysterious tunnels. A little over 45 minutes of unconventional, thoughtful music (partly also ... acoustic!) Does not leave you indifferent. The biggest kick is given by the piece "Plashia", which is a showcase of the album - in which the proportions of sounds used by the band are perfect and the mood from claw to nostalgia waves as the age-old cycle of mother Earth around the sward shield. It does not mean that, for example, the next, fifth track "Volna" (or more) is weaker - on the contrary! The album absorbs the whole feeling that it will fly into space in a moment - what a great kick, for example when riding a bike or a night-long walking back home. Let's add that it's a debut album - and it sounds fantastic!
Reviewed by Vilcin
Rating: 9/10
Contact:
plemya.net