Genre: Dark Ambient

Track Listing:

01 Consciousness is Torn off, the Mentality was Erased
02 Hopelessly to Escape from Current of Circumstances
03 Consequences of Oppressive Phobias and Dependence
04 Texture of Turns Confusing in Inevitability
05 Unfading Pathology Branches in Depth
06 Predilection to Viscous

Nedicry are something of an enigma. Not only is it next to impossible to find any information on them, but at this point their label's homepage is also non-existent. All I have to work with is a six-track, clumsily-worded dark ambient disc in a sleeve that could have been cut from the back of a cereal box. It's all so abstract and minimalistic that it could be intentional - the idea of the reclusive artist has a certain romance to it, after all. Especially an artist with a penchant for breakfast packaging.

While it may not necessarily be Nedicry's fault that the album's physical production is lacking, it doesn't do them any favours. The press release describes the album as "presented as a handmade DVD-size-sleeve" which really means a big picture of some trees, hand-folded into a pouch with a disc stuck somewhere inside. Someone must have had a very dull evening doing all those. As well as this, the song titles are poor attempts at English and though I can see what they were trying to achieve, it's a shame they didn't go for simpler titles and get the grammar correct instead of trying to be a little too artistic with their broken English or running the original Russian through Babelfish.

So it's a shame that the presentation of this album is so shabby because the music's not that bad at all. On first spin it becomes clear that Nedicry have a good idea of how to do things since each of the six numbers has a respectable degree of insight behind them. Nedicry use soft, sinister foundations to underlie the ambiance of the music and then lay subtle synths over the top. Yes, it's a formula that's been used time and time again but it's certainly one that works. The songs range in tone from harmonic to foreboding with strains of Kammarheit or UK's Leviathan and each has a clear atmosphere related to its title.

If there's one place where the band sometimes slip up it's when songs get a little long, overplaying the same ideas again and again. A lot of the synth melodies which are played recurringly do begin to grate after a while and Nedicry can end up labouring the same point ad nauseam, attempting to force an atmosphere rather than letting the music take its own course. There are piano and string sections too, and these are a nice change from normal hackneyed dark ambient music but they're quite obviously played on a synth so their potential is let down.

However, there is promise here and quite a lot of it. Nedicry succeed in creating atmospheric dark ambient music without getting boring or naff. The band aren't trying too hard to be anything in particular and there is a certain honesty to the music in spite of rehashing some sections over and over. Experimenting with some more organic instrumentation and improving the overall development and focus of the songs could create a very good second record, because Sincere Wounds is rather mature for a first release.