Full Length Review: HORTHODOX Аверинъ / Averin (S.N.D. Production) by Serafima Okuneva

Band: HORTHODOX

Place of origin: Russia

Genre: Industrial, noise, dark ambient

Full length: Аверинъ / Averin

Label: S.N.D. Production

Release date: December 14, 2018

If you think the early era of black metal with the burning of churches in Puritan Norway was a true form of expression by satanic cults, read about Nicholas Averin and listen to this release. You will feel the evil nature hidden in the history of Russia, imprinted on a beautiful and deadly sound canvas.

On Easter night 1993, Nicholai Averin took a knife with Satan’s name engraved on the blade and went to the Opta's Hermitage Monastery where the festive service was held. Averin went to the belfry, where the monks Therapont and Trofim rang bells in honor of the holiday. The killer inflicted fatal injuries to both monks. At 6 o'clock in the morning Averin attacked the hieromonk Basil near the belfry and pierced him with a knife, and he died on the spot. Averin is currently in a psychiatric hospital. The story is a source of inspiration and ideas, and this album is the child born of this true story.

The musical wizard and adept of Darkness Horth creates an impressive, cruel sound canvases in Rostov na Donu, collaborating with other musicians. His previous release Descent was recorded along with guitars by the Ukrainian project Do Skonu. The material’s experimental side has a sublime sense of the Divine mixed with uncompromising drone and noise. A dense layered, oppressive atmosphere, with something chthonic, monumental and incomprehensible.

This time Loïc.F took up the same field, who gracefully added his vision to the sound, an audible performance about inevitably approaching Evil. The music permeates every cell of the body and poisons every particle of the mind. Eclecticism of Christian motifs, prayers and tunes attractively and organically fit into the mourning, schizophrenic images of this release, a deep, divine and infernal beauty. A genuinely deep, rich piece of the darkest mood and perception of the world, seasoned with the lion's share of Orthodox aesthetics, keeps you in suspense, nailing a dense, layered sound of hopelessness. The musical equivalent of slow death from a terminal disease. Try to get it and feel it. -Serafima Okuneva

Lineup:

Horth: Samples, synths, programming

Loïc.F: guitars

Track list:

1. I

2. II