Album Review: Wowod - Yarost' I Proshchenie

Album Review: Wowod - Yarost' I Proshchenie
Reviewed by Dan Barnes

It’s Boxing Day as I sit writing this – I still have half a turkey to go at and it looks like that’ll be coming into the new year with me – but at least East 17, Wham! and Maria Carey have buggered off for another eleven months. So, what better way to sweep away those seasonal blues than with a new release; and all I can say about Wowod’s upcoming album is: WOW!

Following on from a couple of EPs, Yarost’l Proshchenie is the St Petersburg band’s debut full length and is being released by Church Road Records, home of such bands a Palm Reader, Respire and Svalbard. I mention this only to show the company Wowod keep and the huge scope you can expect when picking up this record.

Yarost’I Proshchenie is quite literally an album of two halves: one half, the odd numbered songs, being lengthy Post-Metal medications, whereas the even numbered tracks are frenzied whirlwinds of aggression. The record opens with the twelve-minute epic, Rekviem. It is a song which utilises its lengthy run-time to lay down a maker for the rest of the record. Slowly building from the atmospheric soundscapes of the opening minutes, with its Blade Runner-esque keys and steady, metronomic drum, Rekviem adds elements throughout until, at five minutes in, the guitar thickens, and a raw and guttural voice is introduced. This is only a moment, as the song continues to build larger and larger; guitars and keys weave as the sound soars, accompanied by a fragile clean vocal, reminiscent of Burton C. Bell during Fear Factory’s more wistful moments.

There is no respite after such an emotional charged beginning as Tanec Yarosti is a full-on death metal-infused hardcore barrage. Two minutes of unrelenting musical destruction just to make sure you haven’t made yourself too comfortable.

Album Review: Wowod - Yarost

This juxtaposition of the widescreen and cinemascopic with the intense battery persists across Yarost’I Proshchenie, but for the most part the likes of Zhazhda and Zov Tysyachi Nozhey arrive as oasis of calm, regardless of the whirlwind drumming and flailing guitar that would mark the heavy limit of many a band out there.

Case in point is the latter, Zov Tysyachi Nozey – a frenzied death metal attack which seems tame after the immensity of Chornaya Zemlyao, with its slow building dirge and falsely-comforting piano, morphing into a track so heavy it might just have its own gravitational pull.

Clocking in a little over forty-minutes, Yarost’I Proshchenie is a record that never feels like it outstays its welcome. The seven tracks on offer have enough imagination and present sufficient ideas to make continual returns not just inevitable, but necessary.

Wowod have created an album that, if all things were fair, would stand colossus over all other heavy releases in 2021; an album that will simultaneously knock your teeth out and elevate you to soar on mighty wings.

The bar has now been sent. The marker laid down. Let the 2021 game begin.