Review: MOLOCH / GURTHANG

MOLOCH / GURTHANG
Give Praise records

Here we have result at cooperation between Ukrainian and Polish bands. In this case both play in rather funeral way. To tell the truth MOLOCH is so called one man band of Sergiy Fjordsson, even if since two years we have there second member – Gionata Potenti from Italy (dr). So our friend Sergiy comes from city which calls Rivne. City has of course long, very interesting history. It’s also strongly connected with Poland. Actually Ukraine and Poland have in general long common (mostly friendly) history of relations with each other.

Sergiy presents us on this split two songs. The first one is instrumental and it has this something in itself, something dark, mysterious… It’s not complicated; someone could even say that it’s in some way primitive. The same this someone could say about, let’s call it, normal song – “Unendlichkeit”. Well, indeed this is very easy arranged, riffs aren’t various and if we’ll listen carefully we’ll be able to count them on fingers of one hand. Vocal and play of drums also aren’t anything special – drums play probably even less variable than guitar. All this is a truth! But there’s something in this funeral slow kind of Black Metal.

GARTHANG is younger band than MOLOCH and was found in 2010 (MOLOCH in 2002). The3se five guys come from Lublin – city in eastern part of Poland. Also this city has very interesting history, a lot of monuments and huge meaning for at least region (on several fields). Anyway, Polish present a little different music than Sergiy and Gionata. It’s also slow as waltz, also in funeral climate, but surely a little more variable and a little less monotonous than in case of MOLOCH. Of course we can’t expect here any changes of tempos or technical displays! It’s definitely minimalistic music. But in the same time riffs change from time to time. The same thing we can say about vocalizations of A.Z.V. or drums’ playing of Turenn. I don’t know creativity of this band at all, but I suppose that this song (“Of Decay and Solitude MASTER”) is representative for it. It’s more about Doom Metal with elements of Black.

By the way, both bands play surely very dark music! It’s maybe not for every day’s listening (I don’t speak about total maniacs of playing like this). You must have right mood for it. Otherwise this abyss will engulf you totally and you’ll have very serious problems to come out from it!