Review: Second To Sun “Blackbound”

Second To Sun “Blackbound”

Second To Sun  is absolutely irregular music project. Instrumental music, absence of live shows and minimal mine-up. In fact, it is great drummer Theodor Borovski and multi instrumentalist, composer and mastermind Vladimir Lehtinen. With this, Second To Sun  takes first places in iTunes and Google Play charts, thousands digital copies were sold and the band gets many positive feedbacks.

The second album from this project, called Blackbound was released in November, 16. De facto much earlier because it was stolen and posted in Internet. Though this shitty situation, it also means that people want to hear the band and to listen to their music. And there are some reasonable reasons.

Unlike solo instrumental albums, where some musician show his master work, there isn’t 20-minutes solo or something similar (although, professionalism is present here in every single note), but there is a masterly created atmosphere. Sometimes it is oppressive, sometimes it’s sinister and frightening, and sometimes it’s really mad. So Blackbound is appreciated exactly for this.

For each one of seven tracks there is an artwork and a story, that told not by the words, but by music. This is hellishly hard work, but Second To Sun doing it masterly. With this music awakens imagination and fantasy of the listener, and his own experiences covers him all totally. So the main ideas that the authors wanted to say are going to the background. For me personally an ideal example of such experiences was “The Fool”. It was written after inspiration by the movie «Durak (The Fool)», one of the few decent movies among the slag that called «Russian Cinematography». But my imagination was drawing some other picture: a child locked in his room by his parents that desperately struggling with his own inner demons with sound of parent’s quarrel and booze (inserts of condo’s habitants voices is a great illustration. Indeed, sometimes if you want to be terrified, you should only look into a neighboring apartment.

Speaking about the music, the easiest way is to stick on it a label «atmospheric back metal» and to get the wrong sow by the ear. Indeed, music is very atmospheric, there are lots of black metal elements, but it is radically wrong to call it entirely black. There are many elements from other heavy genres, melodic and folk motives. This masterly prepared mix will stuck in a head for a long time, will it be the dialog between guitar and keyboards in “Region 13”, catchy riff in “Ladoga Master” or musical madness in all four parts of ending “Mrakobesie”; I’m sure that everyone will find something in this album.

Blackbound is qualitatively recorded, technical and very interesting submitted album, where every detail  is important: stories behind each track (the band highly recommends to read them while listening, and it worth to be done), artworks from Aleh Zielankievič, and the most valuable is the music, that will not live anyone indifferent. And this is the main thing.