Genre: Experimental Neo-folk

01 Инвокация
02 Rosa Alchemica
03 Свиток Войны
04 Знак Вотана
05 О Происхождении Мира
06 Солнечный Ветер
07 Апокалипсис Адама

A band I’ve never heard of who sing in Russian with song titles in a Cyrillic format that my computer has difficulty understanding? Thanks, guys. Really…

And yet first impressions can be so very misleading. “О Происхождении Мира” (“About World’s Birth”, the label’s translation helpfully points out) starts with mesmeric, electrified strings reminiscent of The Kronos Quartet or Icelandic project Lost In Hilldurness. It generates a shifting air of mystery that’s only amplified by the lack of available information on the band (their website is, perhaps inevitably, in Russian). A stern voice proclaims over the music and this is an addition that, I feel, detracts from the beautiful, layered simplicity of the strings; it’s too high in the mix and has that brittle sound that comes from being too poorly recorded.

From this delicate, magical start we move into a period of heavy drone and near-MZ412 clattering industrial. The stentorian vocals appear again but here, in this angular and menacing passage, they seem to fit. There’s a frantic, ferocious sense that reminds of military transmissions or the paranoia-laced films of Tarkovsky.

These early tracks are superb and genuinely atmospheric which is why the eventual involvement of a tired, slow-strum neo-folk guitar is all the more grating. I’m getting genuinely fed up of bands who think that playing two chords one after the other in that same damn rhythm invokes some sense of martial asceticism. We’ve been flogging this particular equine corpse for years now, can we please move on! It’s my particular bugbear, I accept, and some may find this traditionalism to be immensely appealing.

Strangely, once we’ve got over this burst of backsliding, we then head back into organic drones and delicate, pizzicato strings which is far closer to simple folk than the be-uniformed neo variety. The melodies are ones that could’ve been heard around campfires for centuries with the timeless violin/guitar duo holding forth until they break down into a ticking, clockwork rhythm.

There’s so much in this record that, even though I find some parts of it to not be to my taste, it really drags you in. There are eastern European folk melodies, the deconstructed strings of Shinjuku Thief, Werkraum’s manipulation of genre and Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio’s ice-cold atmospheres. Perhaps a bit more time spent on the production – some of the elements feel too separate and the songs really benefit when the vocals are layered into the sound, rather than sitting on top of it – would only improve Majdanek Waltz’ releases but there’s enough inventiveness and variation to set them on a fine path. Lose the adherence to neo-folk doctrine and I think we’ll be on to a winner.

“Oчень хорошо”, as they may well say…