Date: April 14th, 2023
Label: Moon Records
We stay in Eastern Europe as well and move even more to the east. Romania has no common border with the country Lethargy coming from – there’s Moldova between these two countries, by the way. And those of you who know geography already know what country I am talking about. The band was formed in 2007 and there were many changes in line-up, even if nowadays three of four members are those who founded the ensemble. Anyways, musicians had to move from Zaporizhia to a relatively safe place, capital city Kiev. But as we can see, war didn’t kill the metal scene at all. Well, actually I somehow feel this is even stronger than it was before, even if there were always a lot of great bands out there. I know it’ll sound at least strange, but this war can be some kind of blessing for Ukraine and it takes all aspects of life, including knowledge about metal, and probably also other scenes. I mean, hopefully ensembles from Kiev, Lvov, Odessa, Zaporizhia, Kharkov and so on will become known not only for underground maniacs. And believe me, there’s, and always were, really many very interesting bands over there.
But let’s finally talk about the main topic of this review! “Our Live…” is fourth full-length in history of Lethargy, and the first one with English title what can be explanation why almost no one on so called West heard before about them. You can of course say this is a very modest result as of fifteen years of existence. Yeah, that’s true, but since changes in line-up took place very often then this is quite a huge success in my opinion. Album contains nine songs taking a little more than forty nine minutes. And here most of you suppose what you should expect. Of course this information isn’t enough to guess what kind of our beloved music they present – there’s too many “suspects”. But you already know it’s not Brutal Death Metal in the vein of “…’Till Only the Sick Remain”, “Used, Abused and Left for Dead” , “Purification Through Violence”or “Descend into Depravity”. Ukrainians’ creativity still is brutal in some way, still definitely death metal, but at the same time very melodic, with keyboards here and there and so on. Of course even if this instrument is very important here and participates in quite a huge number of songs (you know, this isn’t some accidental one surely) is still the secondary one, melody is created first of all by guitars and they’re, let’s call it, a boss. At the same time melodies we have to do with on here absolutely aren’t some candy ones or stuff like that! To be honest there’s a big element of Doom in them in my opinion, even if the tuning is stricte death metal one. Anyways we hear a lot of technique, some changes of tempo (even if they’re subtle ones), guitar tricks and everything that death metal is about. I have some connotations with old school Gothenburg school, but our Ukrainian friends give something special to that. I mean, you can feel (at least I’m doing that) a specific Slavonic character in their creativity which adds to this music some kind of wildness and energy characteristic for most ensembles coming from this corner of the world. I can also hear touches of other sub/genres of our beloved music. The truth is they’re probably not too easy to recognize, but clear for real listeners. You can also hear elements of other sub-genres of our beloved kind of music – a little power or even black and so on. And here I end describing the music! You need to have things to discover by yourself. Besides, other staff wait for me in the line to review it.
In short, Lethargy presents very interesting music as well. Perhaps there’s nothing very original in that, but in my opinion this fact is a huge plus. The most important thing for me is that I listen, hell knows, it is the tenth or twenty fifth one, a really great band and I’d wish I got to know them earlier. But better late than never, doesn’t it? Oh, I forgot to write this album is released by Moon Records only digitally, what’s of course something deeply depressing for me, but since there are more important things at the moment in Ukraine, I’m happy as hell I can enjoy these nine songs at least in this format! And who knows, maybe someday CDs, tapes or vinyls, or all of them, will be also available. People who’d be interested not only in enjoying this creativity, but also to be in touch with the ensemble are more then welcome to contact me (the easiest way is on FB, I guess) and I’ll help to contact the band. All will find it with no problem on the oldest, as I know, platform with all types of videos.
