Description

Kzohh is an Ukrainian atmospheric black metal band formed in the year 2014 by members of Khors, Ygg, Reusmarkt, Djur, Ulvegr and Elderblood. That same year they released their first album called IAOLTDOTAD through the No Colour Records label. The band changed singer for their second album Rye Flea Chrismon, released in 2015. This second album takes you through a universe of death and darkness in great details during 7 songs that lasts for approx an hour. The album opens with something that sounds like a medieval get-together with music, wine and people chatting. But soon the darkness comes and strange, mythical sounds seem to appear from deep in the forest. There are creatures there. Dark, frightening beasts, possibly sent up from the deepest regions of hell; spawned by all that is malevolent, vile and rotten about mankind. They’re coming and there’s no escape. Members have had some experience in different bands before and throw all of their influences into one massive album. Traditional black metal, mixed with dark ambient, doom and post-metal elements causes an intense listening experience. Above that, there’s a number of unidentified sounds and noises presents, enhancing the strange atmosphere. So do the vocals by the way. It were those I was listening to when I wrote about the strange animals lurking in the forest. There are some typical black metal screams, a huge number of eerie cries and scary narrative vocals. All of them add a lot to the crushing, dark feeling of the album, which of course is a tremendous plus. These guys definitely seem to take the black metal genre to another level. Another surprising and simply awesome element is formed by the elaborate ambient passages, sometimes with screams from tortured people. In Massebegravelser those passages are being alternated with intense doom and black metal, making the whole almost supernatural and alienating. Then listen to the 11 minutes long Alousia et Pestilentia Ignearia. Very grim, very ominous, very alien-sounding, with an array of crazed voices muttering and screaming their poisonous ravings over the equally pestilential miasma of the instrumental music. For much of the song, the music proceeds at the staggering pace of a funeral dirge, with mystic guitar notes and indefinable electronic sounds floating around like lost phantasms, and ambient keyboard melody drifting like clouds across the moon. But at the beginning and near the end, it moves like a whirlwind of knives, propelled by a metronomic drumbeat. At the end, you enter a narcotic dream, a hypnotic and hallucinatory finale to a strange yet gripping journey. This avant-garde offering of black metal succeeds in being both spell-binding and disturbing, beautifully gloomy and nightmarish. This truly is a strange piece of music, the entire album is. Yet, I would definitely recommend checking this out. It’s one of the most original, haunting and downright evil things I’ve heard this year.

Track listing:
1. Pest Kamen Mit Schiffen
2. Alousia Et Pestilentia Ignearia
3. Massebegravelser
4. Un Drapeau Noir Sur Leglise
5. IV Millas Al Dias
6. Vind I de Tomma Ogonhalor
7. Ghosts Of Melcombe Regis